


Once You Go Bauk...

by laylabinx



Series: A Ballad of Beaten Bards [4]
Category: Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Blood Poisoning, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, But I'm extra terrible to Jaskier in this fic, Dubious Medical Practices, Fever, Fever Dreams, Gen, Hurt Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Hurt Jaskier | Dandelion, Hurt!Geralt, Hurt/Comfort, I'm terrible to both of them honestly, Infection, It's a real thing and it's terrible and fascinating, Jaskier | Dandelion Whump, Like really hurt!Jaskier, Like really sick, Maggot Therapy, Makeshift field medicine, Medieval Medicine, Monster of the Week, Sickfic, hurt!Jaskier, infected wounds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-22
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 27,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24326734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laylabinx/pseuds/laylabinx
Summary: “Look at me, Jaskier.”“I ‘m lookin’ at you, Ger’lt, and you’re very handsome.”The Witcher sighs. “You have a fever.”Jaskier shakes his head slightly. “Can’t have a fever,” he argues weakly as he continues to shiver. “‘M freezing.”“That’s because of the fever.”The bard looks affronted. “Well that’s rude.”(Or, as it turns out, there's no such thing as a mild case of blood poisoning)
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: A Ballad of Beaten Bards [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1604944
Comments: 258
Kudos: 600





	1. The Monster in the Mines

**Author's Note:**

> Hello my loves! I hope you're all doing well in whatever the hell week of quarantine we're in! Let's be honest, time has always been a social construct but now its a whole hell of a lot more like a suggestion at best.
> 
> Anyway, a few eagle-eyed readers might think the title of this fic is strikingly similar to another story I wrote a while back and you'd be correct! Listen, I'm a simple woman and if there's ever an opportunity to use a really dumb play on words in my everyday life then I'm gonna jump it like a hurdle. Also I have exactly four brain cells at my disposal right now and three of them are playing Africa by Toto on a xylophone. So what I'm saying is that the title is not super creative but it works well for what's to come!
> 
> Hope you guys like it!

Something is wrong.

It’s been a little over three hours since Geralt ventured into the abandoned mine shaft with little more than a torch and his sword. He’d told Jaskier to wait outside and keep the fire going, cryptically telling him that fire might be the only useful weapon they had against the creature lurking inside the mineshaft. It’s alarming but then much of what Geralt says and does is alarming; Jaskier has learned by now not to ask too many questions from his Witcher companion and just do what he says. It usually works out better that way and leaves them much less dead than some of the other people they’ve come across who hesitated and asked too many questions.

So here he is, waiting outside in the dark with a small, bright fire burning away in the long-forgotten fire pit the miners used to use to cook their meals. This had been a safe, communal area once, the ground flattened and smoothed so as to provide level seating for anyone stopping to take a meal. The toppled remnants of a few wooden stools and benches still zigzag through the area, the once well-used wood splintered and dry rotted from months of disuse.

A few metal pots and cauldrons are still lined around the fire pit, some with the putrid, rotting remains of food still nestled within. Animals have scavenged some of it but the stuff that remains is soupy and covered in several layers of brightly colored and likely highly toxic mold and fungus. A charred kettle is wedged up against one of the stones lining the fire pit, one side melted and warped inward from heat. It had been left in the ashes of the pit, tipped on its side and smoldering with the embers of the fire beneath it. It’s clear that the miners had vacated this area in a hurry, leaving all food and equipment behind for whatever horror was lurking in the mineshaft.

The same mineshaft Geralt had disappeared into hours ago.

Jaskier sighs and adds another log to the base of the fire, stoking it lightly for the flames to catch on the dry wood. He glances at the entrance of the mineshaft again, always hoping to see the flicker of the Witcher’s torch along the darkened tunnel walls. The optimist in him tells him not to worry, that Geralt is more than capable of taking care of himself and that whatever is in that tunnel doesn’t stand a chance against him. But the logical side of his brain knows that there are bigger and badder things on the Continent than Geralt of Rivia and that one of those big, bad things could be hiding out inside the mineshaft, just waiting to take a lethal swipe at his companion.

He sighs and jabs at the fire for a few more seconds, mindlessly flipped the coals over with the tip of his stick. Not for the first time he wonders if he should venture back down the mountainside toward the town at the base of the foothills and try to round up some additional support. The townspeople had been happy to tell them about the monster in the mineshaft but no one really jumped at the opportunity to join them on their trek up there. When asked for help, the townspeople shook their heads, muttered a protection spell under their breaths, some even pointed up to the mountain and spit on the ground in refusal. They were scared, apparently rightfully so, and no one was willing to risk their lives by joining the hunt.

When the first few miners disappeared, no one gave it much thought. It was a tragedy, yes, but working a mine was known to be a hazardous job. Many chalked it up to carelessness and unfortunate accidents; someone wandered down the wrong section of tunnel and stumbled into a chasm or something along those lines. The mine wasn’t very old, it had only been in operation for a few years and there were still plenty of twists and turns to navigate in order to find the safest and most stable path to take; it would not be outside of the realms of possibility that a confused miner got turned around and simply wandered into an unexplored section of the mine and disappeared into the darkness forever.

But then the miners started disappearing in the well known sections of the mine, the ones that had been worked multiple times and were deemed safe. A single man would enter the area to section off the work for the day and would vanish into thin air, his torch extinguished and his pick discarded on the rocky floor. A thorough search would turn up nothing, just long, dark, empty tunnels with no missing miners in sight.

This alarmed many of the younger workers but the older men were undeterred; the mine provided steady, reliable work and stories of a few lost men were not enough to scare them off so long as the mine kept food on the table and fire in the hearth. They made talismans and charms, they carved protection spells into their arms with blessed daggers that were specifically crafted to ward off evil, they created prayers and recited them before entering the tunnels. They were safe, or so they thought, and it was nothing more than superstition and ghost stories that lived in the mines.

Then the noises started.

They were quiet at first, scritching and scratching sounds like animals moving across the rocky floors of the tunnels. The miners chalked it up to rats and kept working. Then came the growls and groans, the hiss that echoed for a little too long in the dark, the screechy chuckle of something shapeless in the shadows. That was harder to explain but damned if they didn’t try. Maybe it was the shifting of tunnel walls or the squeaky escape of subterranean gas pushing its way through miles of rock and stone? It is the noble endeavor of an explanation to drive away the terror of the unknown.

And then a man got his throat ripped out.

A group of six had been working in one of the approved sections when one of them heard something further down into the darkened depths of the tunnel. It was a strange sound, like long fingernails scraping along the tunnel walls and he stepped toward it to investigate. No one could say what happened next because it happened too fast; one second the man was taking a step into the darkened labyrinth of the tunnel and the next his lantern was swept out of his hand and extinguished.

By the time the other workers realized something had happened it was too late. There was a horrible gurgling sound and the unfortunate miner staggered back with both hands clamped uselessly around the shredded remains of his throat. He collapsed, choking and bleeding out onto the floor of the tunnel as the other miners fled in terror. Only three made it out; two of the other miners met the same grisly fate as their late coworker, their blood and entrails splashed along the walls like macabre cave paintings.

The mine was wholly abandoned after that, the remaining miners fleeing into the night and never returning. Only the bravest of the townsmen were willing to make the wary trek back to the mine a few days later, armed to the teeth and marching in broad daylight. They boarded up the entrance and spit on the door, summarily cursing the mine and everything lurking inside. No one had ventured back in close to a year and it seemed the mine would be left unoccupied for years to come.

The trouble was that the town in the foothills was, in essence, a _mining_ town. The townspeople had settled in this particular area for a reason and had quickly developed an ingenious and efficient way of smelting the ore from the rocky terrain around them. When thick veins of it were found in the surrounding mountains, the mine was constructed in response. The mine proved to be remarkably prosperous and the little town quickly flourished. Without safe access to the mine, the town was doomed to wither and waste and its people would be forced to move away and settle elsewhere. So needless to say, there was a vested interest in ridding the mine of its monsters and a passing Witcher seemed like just the person to do it.

Geralt agreed to help but ordered half the payment up front (which he didn’t accept in spite of the order and left it sitting on the table when they left for the mountain) with the other half promised when (or if) he returned.

Jaskier has learned that in all the time they’ve traveled together, Geralt rarely takes full payment for a job unless the people asking for help are somehow directly at fault. If people are being victimized through no fault of their own (ie. a beast that likes to spirit away children in the dead of night for a small and tasty snack), the Witcher will usually only accept partial payment, just enough to buy supplies and a few meals.

However, if a town is being terrorized by the vengeful spirit of an innocent but unfortunate woman who was burned for witchcraft, full payment is due with no negotiations or concessions given. Ultimately Geralt determines the responsibility of those paying and makes a decision on whether or not they should accept full monetary blame for the creature they’re hiring him to deal with.

In this case it seems he’s deemed the townspeople victims of the former; mostly not at fault but fucked with all the same. So he demands payment for the sake of appearances and makes a point of leaving it behind when they set off, vaguely telling the fearful townspeople that he’ll collect it when he returns. Granted, no one really expected him to return, not with the monster in the mines, but they didn’t try to stop him either.

Jaskier is beginning to wonder if he shouldn’t have tried to stop him too.

He’s been waiting out here for hours, torn between watching the mouth of the mineshaft anxiously for any sign of his companion and debating on whether or not to go in after him. He really doesn’t want to go in after him but he can’t shake the feeling that maybe Geralt needs his help dealing with...whatever is in there. True, he doesn’t know how much help he would really be but he could at least shout words of encouragement.

He pushes himself up from the fire and grabs one of the torches they’d fashioned along the path up here. It’s not very big, a long thin stick wrapped with cloth and tar, but it works well enough to light up the immediate area around them. He lowers the tip of the torch into the flames, just long enough for the wick to catch, and then steps away from the fire pit. He doesn’t have to worry about the fire burning down anytime soon; he’s pretty sure the townspeople can see it even from the foothills.

Roach huffs at him as he stands like she disagrees with his decision already. It should be insulting, honestly; even Geralt’s horse seems to know when he’s about to do something stupid and disapproves.

Jaskier walks over and strokes the horse’s flank soothingly.

She huffs again and grabs a mouthful of his hair in retaliation at which Jaskier just sighs.

It had taken a couple of months for Roach to warm up to him and realize that yeah, he was annoying but he was stupidly loyal to Geralt and she had no reason to try and trample him everytime he walked by. Her aggression had abated over time and she had moved from headbutting him or stomping on his foot if he got too close to finally just irritable acceptance. Now she’ll usually just huff and snort when she’s annoyed with him (which is still more often than not, just like Geralt) and occasionally pick at his clothes with her teeth. She’s found it to be a more effective deterrent because the bard is unusually picky about his clothes.

“Never fear, fair lady,” Jaskier tells her, trying and failing to extricate himself from the irritable mare as she continues to chew on his hair. “I’m just going to see if I can catch a glimpse of our wayward Witcher.”

Roach huffs and spits out the clump of hair she’d been gnawing on, leaving it wet and slimy and plastered to the side of Jaskier’s head. It’s a clear indication that she still doesn’t agree with his plan but she’ll allow it if it means checking on Geralt.

Jaskier steps toward the mouth of the mineshaft, torch in one hand while the other ineffectively tries to smooth his horse-slobbered hair. The opening of the mineshaft yawns wide and dark as he gets closer, the thick planks of wood that had been used to close it off laying on a discarded pile at the opening. The blackened depths impenetrable even with the aid of his torch. He tries not to think about the fact that he can’t see anything past the first couple feet but there’s a high chance that something in the darkness can see him clearly.

He stands still and quiet, listening intently for any indication of his missing companion. For a long time there’s nothing but the soft rustle of leaves moving with the evening breeze and the quiet crackle of the fire pit behind him. He doesn’t enter the mineshaft but he gets as close as he dares, resting a tentative hand on one of the splintered boards still hanging from the threshold. He extends his arm just a little into the darkness, trying to illuminate anything past the first few steps into the tunnel, but it has the same effect as dropping a candle into the blackened depths of the sea.

Something skitters in the darkness just past his reach and he staggers back in alarm. Heart thumping wildly, he lifts his torch again and stares back into the darkness.

“Geralt…?” he says, his voice coming out as a low hiss. Something moves again, closer this time, and Jaskier has a split second to realize that no, it’s not Geralt, before the darkness literally explodes outside of the mineshaft and tackles him.

He hits the ground hard and rolls backward over an embankment into a cluster of brambles lining the path. His torch flies somewhere off to his left and disappears into the underbrush, leaving him fighting frantically in the dark. There’s something on top of him, heavy and dark and pinning him into the dirt, and he can’t make out the shape. It’s like darkness developed a physical body, onyx outlines and sable shape. The only thing that registers in his brain is teeth, teeth, _teeth_ and claws.

Rows upon rows of long, needle-like teeth line an enormous, gaping mouth and claws the size of hunting knives hover dangerously close to his face. There’s a horrible hiss above him, like poisonous gas releasing from a volcanic fissure, and the smell of death and decay. His face is mashed into the thorny branches harder and he has a fleeting second to think this is how he’ll die before there’s a furious snarl from above and then suddenly the creature is knocked off of him.

A loud crash echoes through the brambles around him and Jaskier can hear Geralt bite back a curse as he pursues the creature into the darkness. “Get the torch!” he shouts back to him, the intensity of his voice enough to shake Jaskier from his terrified stupor.

He scrambles to his feet and snatches the fallen torch from the brambles and runs to where Geralt and the creature are grappling furiously. It’s hard to see and even harder to make out; it looks like Geralt is wrestling with an incredibly large, dark shadow that’s trying desperately to bite his head off. The Witcher’s white hair stands out in stark contrast to the utter blackness of the creature he’s battling and he manages to pin it just long enough to look back at Jaskier.

“Stab it!” he growls, straining to maintain his hold on the beast.

“With what?!” Jaskier yells back, searching the brambles useless for Geralt’s sword.

“The torch!” the Witcher bellows, staggering a bit as the creature continues to thrash against him. “Use the flames! Aim for the center!”

Jaskier nods and lunges forward with the torch even though he’s not entirely sure what he’s aiming for; he can’t tell the center from anything else as the creature resembles just an impenetrable pool of darkness with teeth. He aims for what he thinks is the center and drives the flaming end of the torch deep into the beast’s black body.

It lets out a loud, piercing screech and struggles desperately for another few seconds before shuddering and dissipating in a cloud of ash and blackened mist.

Within seconds it's like the entire encounter never happened.

Geralt sighs heavily and bends at the waist, planting his hands on his knees. “Good work,” he tells Jaskier, struggling to catch his breath.

“What...the hell was that thing?” Jaskier hears himself ask but the words are muffled and distorted over the rush of blood in his ears.

“A bauk,” Geralt tells him, straightening after a second and rolling his shoulders experimentally. “There was a nest of them in the mine, four that I counted. The miners walked straight into their territory when they started digging and never even knew it.”

“Are there more of them?” Jaskier asks, looking back at the opening of the mine warily.

Geralt shakes his head. “Doubtful. They aren’t that common in these parts; this nest was likely the outlier.”

“Good, good,” Jaskier says shakily, still trying to regain his composure from the encounter. “I would like to never see one again if at all possible.”

“You won’t,” Geralt tells him, making his way back up the embankment. “They usually see you first.”

“You know what I mean…”

The Witcher smirks and tugs a thorny vine from his hair. “They can’t stand the light, fire drives them away and destroys them if they get too close. As long as you don’t go off wandering in the dark you should be safe.”

He takes another step and stops, gesturing toward Jaskier. “Are you injured?”

Jaskier frowns and shakes his head. “No, why-?”

“Your side.”

The bard glances down and sees the side of his shirt shredded and bloody. He frowns again and lifts the tattered edges, stealing a hesitant glimpse at the damage beneath.

There are three long, jagged claw marks slashing from the lower curve of his ribs down through the soft, fleshy length of his side. The wounds aren’t lethal by any means but they’re deep and bleeding freely and have left his clothes in utter ruin.

It’s funny, he didn’t even know it had happened until Geralt pointed it out.

He swallows and shakes his head. “The brock-”

“Bauk.”

Jaskier rolls his eyes but acquiesces. “The bauk must have landed a lucky swipe when it tackled me.” He frowns and lets his tattered shirt tail fall back in place with a mild wince.

“Hm,” Geralt allows as he clears the edge of the embankment. “You should get that looked at when we get back to town.”

It’s a kind enough suggestion but Jaskier is familiar enough with his friend’s tone to recognize the tightness of pain in his voice. He turns his attention back to his companion and sees that Geralt didn’t exactly make it out unscathed either.

The thick leather covering one leg has been shredded and torn and the Witcher’s leg is slick with blood all the way down to his foot. There are other places where his armor and leather are scored and split, parting gifts from the bauks he fought in the mineshaft. It’s a wonder he made it out at all considering the creatures he was up against but Geralt always did seem to thrive when the odds were against him.

“I don’t think I’m the only one who needs to find a healer,” Jaskier admonishes lightly, stepping forward when Geralt’s wounded leg stiffens and tries to buckle under him. The bard catches his weight against his uninjured side and provides stability as he walks forward. For a brief moment he hears Geralt grumble under his breath and he thinks the Witcher will try to shrug him off and insist he can walk on his own but the rebuff never comes. Instead Geralt leans against him as they walk and Jaskier struggles to maintain the crooked, staggering gait they’ve developed along the way.

The distance between the embankment and the fire pit is not far but it takes longer to reach it with an injured Witcher who’s barely able to put weight on one leg. It also doesn’t help that Geralt is taller than Jaskier and tends to take longer strides so it’s difficult to keep them both upright and out of the dirt on their trek back toward the fire pit.

Roach whinnies worriedly as they approach, tossing her head and stamping at the dirt with her hooves. If she could talk she’d probably be giving them both an earful right now but as it is she settles herself with fretful huffs and snorts.

“Told you I’d be back,” Geralt tells her as he staggers to a stop next to the troubled mare. She tosses her head again as he unties her reins and snuffles his hair, sliding a look toward Jaskier like he’s somehow to blame. She settles and stands still when Geralt pulls himself up onto her back and into the saddle, knickering to herself fitfully. It’s clear he won’t be able to make it down the mountain path on his own and she waits patiently as he gathers himself securely in the saddle.

He offers a hand to Jaskier but the bard shakes his head, gently turning down the invitation. Roach can travel much faster and safer down the mountain side if there’s only one of them on her back and it’s clear Geralt needs the ride more than he does.

The Witcher shrugs and guides Roach away from the fire pit and back toward the mountain path they’d taken to get up here. It will be a slow journey but they’ll likely reach the town well before dawn.

Jaskier bundles the remains of his tattered, bloody shirt against the bleeding wounds in his side and presses down hard to slow the bleeding. He grips the torch tightly in his right hand and follows after them, taking one last look at the mineshaft and the horrors which had taken place within.

Everything is quiet now, no skittering, no scuffling, no sounds of dagger-like claws scraping along the walls. Still, Jaskier can’t shake the nagging notion of how many things could see him in the dark and how truly vulnerable that made him feel. He shudders once, turns, and walks after Geralt and Roach, leaving the mine and it’s murderous monsters far behind.


	2. Overnight Celebrities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Geralt is no stranger to Jaskier’s tales of sexual triumph but he doesn’t feel like going into great detail about how his and Nela’s enthusiastic lovemaking tore his wounds open again and left him stiff and miserable for the rest of the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! Thank you so much for the kudos and sweet comments, y'all are the best! Hope you enjoy the new chapter!

They finally stagger back into town sometime in the middle of the night and immediately make their way to the local physician, all but collapsing on his doorstep. The path leading up to the mine was narrow and treacherous even in the daylight and was several times worse at night. It was rocky and steep and uneven and it took twice as long coming down as it did going up. That coupled with the general fatigue that accompanied these kinds of hunts left them both completely exhausted by the time they reached the town.

The physician was surprised to see them for a number of reasons: first, he honestly hadn’t expected them both to come back alive and second he hadn’t expected them in the middle of the night. It takes a few slow seconds for him to realize that the two bloody men standing on his doorstep were the same two who had gone up to the mine the evening before but once he does make the connection he ushers them inside quickly so he can tend to their wounds.

Geralt’s injuries are severe but non-lethal and a few of the gashes on his legs require stitches to aid in the healing process. The largest one runs from his hip all the way to his knee, the flesh sliced cleanly and laid open to expose twitching red muscle underneath. It was a deep, ugly wound and in spite of Geralt’s unusually high pain tolerance, Jaskier has to step in and hold his leg still when the surgeon pulls tightly (all while apologizing profusely) on the thread to get the wound to close completely.

The man’s wife steps in after that and asks Jaskier to help her remove the rest of Geralt’s shredded, bloody clothes so her husband can check for other wounds. Any other time and it might have garnered some sense of modest hesitation but they're both too tired to care. Geralt appears completely unbothered by the request and Jaskier just doesn’t have the energy to feel self-conscious when she asks him to do the same. It probably helps that she speaks to them in a soothing, maternal voice which makes it sound like she’s done this hundreds of times before. She has a sweet, plump face and warm hands and Jaskier is willing to bet his last coin that she’s the town midwife.

Once they’ve both been stripped to the skin it’s easier to see the extent of their injuries. Aside from the few wounds that required stitches and the subsequent blood loss, Geralt is remarkably unharmed. The physician is dumbfounded and sheepishly admits that he expected the Witcher’s injuries to be much more severe based on the amount of blood on his clothes. Happy to be proven wrong, he cleans and bandages Geralt’s injured leg tightly and then sends him off with his wife so she can show him to a bed.

Jaskier’s injuries are relatively minor by comparison. His back and shoulders are covered in small scratches from where he was tackled into the brambles and he stands very still as the physician plucks out a couple of the more stubborn thorns that have embedded themselves in his skin. He has a couple of bruises forming along his arms and back that will heal on their own and don’t require any further treatment aside from rest.

The wounds on his side are a bit more serious. They’re deep and they’re still bleeding sluggishly but they’re not wide and laid open like the wounds in Geralt’s leg and don’t require stitches to close them up. The physician pokes and prods for a few moments to make sure nothing was punctured in the process and determines that the gashes, ugly as they are, are painful flesh wounds more than anything else. He cleans the wounds thoroughly (which hurts) and packs them with bandages (which hurts even more) before sending Jaskier off to get some rest as well.

The man’s wife meets him at the doorway and ushers him into a darkened back room lined with cots. There are five total, evenly spaced around the room, and it’s clear that this room more than likely serves as the town hospital. Being primarily a mining community, it makes sense that the physician’s house/hospital be located right at the base of the foothills so that he could quickly receive any unfortunate workers who were injured in the mine. Jaskier tries not to think about how many were killed by the bauk before they got there.

Geralt is on the cot furthest from the door, dressed in borrowed clothes and already sleeping deeply. The physician’s wife offers Jaskier some clothing as well and helps him tug the shirt over his head as lifting his arms tugs painfully at the wounds in his side. She leads him to an adjacent cot toward the back of the room and helps him lay down and get settled, passing her hand soothingly over his hair once he’s laying down completely.

And that’s all he remembers until sometime the next day.

**OOOOO**

They wake up the next morning to find they’ve become celebrities overnight.

It had taken less than an hour for word to spread throughout the town that the mine had been cleared and its monsters slain. It took less than six hours to plan a festival that could have put even the largest and most elaborate celebrations in Cintra to shame. A feast was planned, a speech was composed, and the townspeople were eager and excited to express their appreciation for saving the town.

All of this was lost on the town’s designated heroes, however, as they spent the majority of the night and into mid-morning unconscious.

So needless to say it was a bit of a shock to leave the physician’s house the next morning and find themselves descended upon by every member of the grateful community. There’s no fighting it, there’s no way of resisting, and they both find themselves sucked into the festivities before they even know what’s happening.

The day passes by in a blur, one celebration skipping into the next, and it seems that every single person in town comes up to thank them at least twice throughout the day.

Geralt finds himself at the center of attention from the town’s extremely curious children and they follow him everywhere all day asking about the monsters he’s hunted and the beasts he’s slain. They ask him about his sword and his hair and his eyes and his horse (who is getting fed more apples than she knows that to do with) and a billion other questions in between. He can’t get away from them (he knows, he’s tried) so he gives up and fields the questions to the best of his ability and ends up telling most of his life story to an audience that mostly still has their milk teeth.

Jaskier is hounded as well, just by a different kind of audience. His audience is composed of fans (or just very polite pretenders) who want to hear every song, sonnet, and ballad he’s ever composed or thought of composing. He’s surprised to learn that some of them even know his songs well enough to request them by name and he’s more than happy to oblige. He’s entertained eager audiences before (although more often than not his performances take place in a dimly lit tavern with the patrons only half-listening to whatever comes out of his mouth) but he’s never played for one that hung on his every word and acted like he invented poetry itself.

There’s one girl in particular who sits close and listens closer, completely enraptured by every performance. She has dark skin and dark eyes and he finds himself tailoring most of his performances for her. She laughs at his jokes and smiles when he looks at her and Jaskier thinks he could devote an entire sonnet to the dimple that appears on the left side of her mouth everytime she smiles.

So he doesn’t protest when she steals him away for awhile and leads him to a large, shady tree near the center of the town. It’s a welcome break; while he loves an audience and thrives on their attention, the constant playing has left him stiff and fatigued. He chalks most of it up to the long walk back from the mine the night before and blames the rest on the fact that he hasn’t played for an overeager audience like this in a very long time. He doesn’t dwell on it too much though because there’s a beautiful girl on his arm and for now he’s just happy to spend a moment with her.

He doesn’t see Geralt again until later that evening when the entire community gathers together for a feast held in the longhouse in the center of town. The crowd is loud and cheerful and the food smells amazing but Jaskier pays little attention to it and instead seeks out his silent, brooding friend.

The Witcher is standing toward the back of the building, tucked away in a corner like he’s doing his best to blend in with the wooden beams supporting the structure. He’s alone for the first time since that morning, blessedly devoid of thankful townspeople and curious children.

He tips his chin in acknowledgement of Jaskier’s arrival but says nothing.

The bard manages to snag two mugs of ale on his way across the room and passes one to his surly companion. “Let it never be said that small towns can’t throw together enormous celebrations,” he says, knocking his mug against Geralt’s by way of a toast.

“Mm,” the Witcher replies before taking a long draught from his own mug.

“Oh, come on,” Jaskier sighs in exasperation. “You can’t tell me you aren’t enjoying this just a little bit.”

“I’m not,” Geralt tells him bluntly, surveying the crowd. “It’s excessive and unnecessary; it will take months before the mine is able to reopen fully which means these people should be preserving their food and resources, not wasting it all in one night.”

“Come on, Geralt,” Jaskier tries again, bumping his friend’s shoulder with his own. “These people are happy and grateful and they want to thank you in the only way they know how.”

“Then they should pay and be done with it.”

Jaskier rolls his eyes. “You and I both know you won’t accept their payment even when it’s offered.”

“Mm,” the Witcher mumbles again, finishing his ale and setting the mug on the ground beside his feet. “The longer we stay, the longer this will continue,” he says, once again eyeing the cheerful throngs of people filling the building. “We’ll leave at dawn.”

Jaskier frowns and fixes his companion with a look. “Dawn?” he repeats, glancing between the settled determination in Geralt’s expression and the outline of the bandages visible beneath the leg of his pants. “Are you sure we should be leaving so quickly with your leg like that? I doubt traveling so soon after-”

“My leg will be fine,” Geralt cuts him off, amending his tone when he realizes it's come across too sharply. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” he clarifies, gesturing around the room to the loud, enthusiastic celebration taking place inside the hall.

Jaskier nods in understanding. He’s known Geralt for long enough now to know that the Witcher doesn’t do well with people and he does even worse with crowds. In Geralt’s opinion (and one that he’s shared with Jaskier multiple times when he was feeling particularly annoyed with the bard) an individual person was distracting enough, a crowd was just a liability. And Jaskier knew from experience that crowds tended to leave his companion moodier and more irritable than he usually was and that the likelihood of someone getting stabbed tended to rise dramatically. As such, although he still disagrees with the timing because of Geralt’s injury, he understands his friend’s desire to leave at the earliest opportunity.

“You’re right,” he says after a moment, eyeing the crowd with a nod. “These people’s livelihoods have been interrupted for months, it will do them good to transition back into a sense of normalcy.”

Geralt quirks an eyebrow like he expected the bard to put up more of an argument regarding their departure but says nothing. Jaskier is usually much more vocal when it comes to leaving the safety and comfort of civilization for the cold, desolate unknown so it’s a little surprising when the bard agrees so readily.

The truth is Jaskier wouldn’t mind getting back on the road and away from the teeming crowds that had surrounded him all day. Rather than feeling rejuvenated and inspired by the town’s praise, he feels heavy and tired. Normally he’s able to feed off a crowd’s energy and translate it directly into his performance but today it seemed much more difficult to do that. Maybe it was because he was still tired from the night before and had a hard time keeping up with the fawning, energetic townspeople or maybe he’s just not used to this much fanatic adoration at any one time.

Whatever the reason, he just feels drained.

He thinks that maybe getting back on the road and returning to their own sense of normalcy will help. They’d been moving a lot recently, jumping from one job to the next like Geralt was trying to outrun something or maybe catch up to something else, but the constant movement felt familiar and routine by now. They arrive in a town, Geralt slays whatever monster needs slaying, they move on. The lifestyle was much more nomadic than Jaskier had been used to back when he first began traveling with the Witcher but now he finds he doesn’t mind it as much.

He looks across the room and spots Nela, the pretty girl he’s spent the afternoon with; she’s the only thing that makes him reconsider their abrupt departure. She’s sweet and funny and he’d thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon they’d spent together and he knows that if they leave tomorrow he’ll likely never see her again. Still, he knows if they stay it will just prolong the inevitable and it will be that much harder to leave.

Geralt follows his line of sight and spots the girl across the hall. She’s beautiful and smiling and he has a pretty good idea of where Jaskier will be spending the rest of his time.

“Enjoy the evening,” he tells him, clapping the bard on the shoulder as he passes. “Just don’t get yourself killed by an overprotective father before the night’s done. Meet me at the stables in the morning.”

Jaskier nods and watches as his friend walks away, slipping through the crowd and disappearing a moment later. He has no idea where Geralt is off to but if he had to guess it would be away from the longhouse and back to the seclusion and silence of the physician’s home. The man and his wife had been kind enough to offer their home for as long as the duo planned to stay, insisting that it was no trouble and that they were welcome for as long as they needed.

It’s a very kind offer and Jaskier has every intention of thanking them sincerely the next morning before they leave but he knows he won’t be returning to the house anytime soon, not when he could spend a bit more time with Nela. That conclusion is further solidified when she takes his hand and leads him out of the longhouse, into the darkness and back to her home. When her dress falls to the floor and she pulls him into bed with a smile, he knows he won’t be returning to the physician’s house at all that night.

**OOOOO**

Jaskier doesn’t sleep well that night.

He’s restless and fidgety and what little sleep he does get is short and fitful. At times he’s too hot, the next minute he’s too cold, and he can’t seem to find a comfortable position no matter how hard he tries. The scratches across his back and shoulders from falling into the brambles are sore and the wounds in his side are even worse.

During some of their more vigorous activities that evening, the deep slashes had reopened and started bleeding again, soaking through the bandages and trickling down his side. Nela dug through a pile of clean linens and was able to find something to use as a makeshift bandage. She helped him clean and re-bandage the wounds but it still took awhile for the bleeding to slow to a stop.

He spends the rest of the night shifting around restlessly, trying and failing to find a comfortable position that takes the pressure off his side. He keeps his movements as slow as possible so as not to disturb Nela and tries to keep his pained grunts to a minimum.

After a few hours, he gives up and settles himself to watching the inky black sky slowly lighten outside the window. It’s not so bad, he thinks, laying here watching the sunrise with Nela curled against his chest, her dark hair splayed across his shoulder. He holds her a while longer, savoring the soft warmth of her skin and the light lavender scent of her hair.

He hopes she’ll understand why he has to leave.

It’s a little before dawn when he finally makes the decision to get up and find his clothes. Nela mumbles something quietly in her sleep but doesn’t wake up when he slides out of the bed, gently tucking the blankets in around her as he does. He finds his clothes scattered across the floor and gets dressed slowly, hissing quietly as the movements jostle his injuries. He'd hoped that laying still for a while would ease some of the pain in his side but it didn’t; if anything he’s even more stiff and sore and regrettably finds that when he moves too suddenly the wounds in his side pull painfully.

He slips outside quietly and takes one last, lingering look at Nela before he closes the door. He tells himself that maybe one day he’ll pass through and find her again. It’s a nice thought at least.

The town is quiet and still in the pre-dawn light and the walk back to the physician’s house feels much different than it did the day before. The townspeople are locked away and sleeping peacefully in their homes, a marked difference from the excitement and celebration that filled the tiny town only a few hours ago.

Geralt already has Roach saddled up and waiting by the time he gets there, their few belongings stashed and stored inside the saddlebags. The Witcher eyes him carefully when he walks up, taking in the mussed hair and dark circles. “Long night?”

“Something like that,” Jaskier replies, still struggling to shake the stiffness out of his muscles as he walks. He hopes that moving around will loosen him up and drive away some of the lingering soreness from the past two days.

Geralt frowns as he tightens a buckle on Roach’s saddle. “Are you alright?” he asks, taking note of his bard’s unusually ragged appearance. Lofty sexual conquests aside, Jaskier usually manages to keep his appearance at least somewhat refined and kempt. This morning, however, he just looks drowsy and bedraggled.

“Fine,” Jaskier tells him with a fluttery wave and a small smile. “Just haven’t been awake very long.” It’s a lie but he doesn’t feel like explaining any further. Geralt is no stranger to Jaskier’s tales of sexual triumph but he doesn’t feel like going into great detail about how his and Nela’s enthusiastic lovemaking tore his wounds open again and left him stiff and miserable for the rest of the night.

Geralt doesn’t seem convinced but he doesn’t force the issue. Again, Jaskier has never had any problem sharing every intimate detail with his companion (much to Geralt’s chagrin) and if he feels like telling him at some point he will.

“Are you good to walk?” he asks over his shoulder as he pulls himself up into the saddle. He knows the stitches in his leg won’t hold up to long periods of walking so he’ll avoid it for a while if he can.

Jaskier nods and again waves away his concerns. “I’ll be better once we start moving.”

Geralt shrugs one shoulder and takes hold of Roach’s reins, leading her toward the edge of town. “Suit yourself,” he mumbles to himself quietly, catching sight of Jaskier as the bard begins walking along beside him. The sun hasn’t even crested the edges of the mountain as they make their way out beyond the borders of the town, leaving the sleepy, grateful residents behind in their wake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More to come soon guys! :D


	3. Silence is Golden (Unless it Involves Your Bard)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jaskier is on his knees in the mud, one hand gripping the ground tightly while the other is wrapped around his waist. His teeth are clenched, eyes squeezed shut, and it looks like he’s doing his best not to be sick.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I hope you're doing well! Things are slowly turning from bad to worse for our boys (and trust me, it gets soooo much worse) but I hope you all enjoy it! 
> 
> You sadists. <3

Jaskier is too quiet.

Geralt is loath to admit that that’s what’s been bothering him all morning and even more loath to admit that it took him most of said morning to figure it out. They’d been walking since dawn, carefully making their way through the rocky footpaths and up toward the hills rolling to the northeast. It was a steady journey and they maintained a moderate pace which kept them moving in a single direction. There’s a decent sized city beyond the steep, sloping hills and Geralt estimates they’ll reach it within the next day or two if they keep up this pace.

For the time being, at least, he’s just enjoying the silence.

The cheer and celebration of the townspeople had been very kind but a little too much in his opinion. He understood their relief and gratitude at the recovery of the mine but the entire town whipping itself into a frenzy was unnecessary. He did what they’d hired him to do: find the monster in the mines and kill it. No muss, no fuss. At least that’s how he viewed it.

He wasn’t used to adoring crowds and fawning villagers and he certainly wasn’t used to throngs of insatiably curious children following his every move. The constant praise and attention was more claustrophobic than the inky black catacombs of the mineshaft and he felt that if they stayed in the town any longer his mental health would suffer for it.

To his chagrin Jaskier had been right about not taking the townspeople’s full payment. He took less than half and left the rest behind because the town would need it in the coming months in order to reopen the mine. The town had been left without hardly any source of income for months thanks to the mine closing down and while the celebration may have fooled the less observant passerby, Geralt knew the town was in dire straits.

It wasn’t blatantly obvious but there were signs that the residents of the little town had faced a fair amount of hardship in the weeks leading up to their arrival. The children were a bit too small and the townspeople were a bit too gaunt, both of which indicated that food had become more scarce and was likely being supplemented with things containing no nutritional value like sawdust and chalk. With any luck reopening the mine would reverse that and put the town back on track toward prosperity but it would still take a while.

More than anything they would need more lanterns for the mine, better sources of light that would prevent another bauk catastrophe in the future. The likelihood of another nest was extraordinarily slim but not impossible and the only way to protect themselves when they were way down deep in the mine was to have a bright, hot source of light.

They would need their money to make that happen and it didn’t feel right to take the original asking price. He took just enough to get them to their next destination and left the rest behind.

It occurs to him much later in the day, hours after they left, that Jaskier would have made a joke about that by now. The bard was never one to miss out on gentle teasing and banter so Geralt is rightly confused when he realizes that Jaskier hasn’t cracked a single joke about the payment since they left. Now that he thinks about it, the bard has barely spoken all morning, something made more alarming by the fact that Jaskier was hardly ever quiet, even in his sleep, and Geralt would normally have told him to shut up at least three times already.

During their travels the bard was constantly humming or muttering to himself, idly dreaming up new songs or waxing poetic about blades of grass or whatever flower left him particularly inspired that day. He’d pluck out nonsensical melodies on his lute, grumble about his clothes, or begin regaling his companion with grand stories and epics that were almost certainly made up but Geralt never had it in him to make him stop. As much as it galled him to admit, he was used to the constant talking and singing and muttering and just overall noise that Jaskier made when they traveled and now he’s not doing any of it.

Something had been bothering him for most of the morning and he couldn’t pinpoint what it was until just that moment. He realizes then, quite suddenly, that their journey has been too quiet, specifically that _Jaskier_ has been too quiet, and that bothers him.

He looks to his right to see the bard keeping pace alongside Roach, gaze directed ahead and surveying the landscape as they passed. He still looks disheveled from that morning, hair slightly more unkempt and wayward than it usually was, and there are deep circles under his eyes that indicate he either slept very little or didn’t sleep at all the night before.

There’s something about his movements too; he’s walking fine but his gait lacks the usual bounce and energy he normally walks with. All of this bothers him (not the least of which is the realization that Geralt knows Jaskier well enough to recognize his walking style) and he finally decides to say something.

“Are you alright?” he asks, dividing his attention between the path ahead and the bard to his right.

Jaskier blinks himself out of whatever thoughts are rumbling through his head and looks over at him. “Huh?”

“Are you alright?” Geralt asks again, directing Roach around a rather large outcropping of roots that poke up through the ground. “You’re quiet.”

Jaskier offers a small, cheeky smile in response. “You prefer me talking?”

“You’re _too_ quiet,” Geralt clarifies with a huff, turning his attention back to the path. “Did something happen in the town?”

Jaskier shakes his head. “No, everything’s fine. I’m just tired, that’s all.”

Geralt isn’t convinced but he doesn’t push the issue. He knows Jaskier has loved and left many beautiful women (and a few men) behind during their travels so there’s no reason to think that that particular town or the pretty girl he spent the night with would be any different. Still, he can’t shake the feeling that something is off with his normally chatty travel companion.

“Let’s take a break up ahead,” he says, indicating a curve in the path that opens up to a small clearing off to the side. A shallow creek bed winds its way alongside the path they’re traveling, the water babbling pleasantly as they walk. He knows for a fact that Roach wouldn’t mind a break and Jaskier probably needs one too even if he’s not saying so.

He guides Roach over to the clearing and dismounts closer to the creek. The sudden change in position jars his injured leg and he bites back a curse before it can make its way out. The wound is healing well and the stitches are holding strong but his leg still throbs angrily when he puts weight on it and sends white hot shockwaves down to his ankle with each step he takes. It takes a second for him to put his full weight on the leg without feeling like it’s going to buckle beneath him and drop him onto the ground.

Once he’s convinced he’s not about to take a header into the dirt, he loosens Roach’s saddle and leads her over to the creek so she can drink and graze along the bank. He turns back and finds a large, smooth boulder nestled among the trees and sits down, extending his injured leg out in front of him. The stitches pull slightly as he moves his leg but the pain fades quickly after a moment.

Jaskier lowers himself down onto the ground at the base of a tree and kicks his legs out in front of him as well. He seems a little more winded than usual but considering they’ve been walking since before dawn Geralt convinces himself that it’s normal and no cause for alarm.

“Where’s our next stop?” Jaskier asks after a moment, eyes drifting over the gentle ripples of the creek in front of them.

“There’s a city past these hills,” Geralt tells him, watching the bard from the corner of his eye. He seems mildly flushed but, once again, they’ve been traveling for hours and the day was only getting warmer. “A pretty large one too if I’m not mistaken. We’ll stop there and take stock of our supplies.”

Jaskier nods slowly and sinks back against the tree a bit more. “Good plan,” he says, closing his eyes and tilting his head back toward the shady canopy overhead.

He’s asleep within seconds.

The younger man is clearly exhausted so Geralt lets him sleep while Roach ambles along the creek bed. They could easily travel a few more miles today but the accumulation of dark, steely grey clouds off to the north indicates that rain might be building on the horizon before the day is out. Finding decent shelter for the night might be the better course of action rather than trying to press on.

He lets Jaskier sleep for close to an hour before he finally pushes himself off the boulder and makes his way over to rouse the dozing bard. Jaskier jumps a little when Geralt touches him but relaxes a second later when he remembers where he is. He accepts Geralt’s hand and the Witcher pulls him to his feet carefully.

“Looks like rain,” Jaskier mumbles drowsily, staring up at the gathering clouds overhead.

Geralt nods and walks back over to Roach to lead her back through the clearing. He decides against getting back up into the saddle because sitting still for too long seems to do more harm than good for the stiff, healing wounds in his leg. And, if he’s being completely honest with himself, he wants to keep a closer eye on Jaskier as they walk. The bard’s behavior (or lack thereof, for that matter) is still bothering him and he’d be remiss to say he wasn’t a little concerned.

“We’ll start looking for shelter soon,” he tells him, watching as Jaskier slowly turns away from the creek and follows him back through the clearing. He’s tempted to force Jaskier into the saddle for a while but he’s pretty sure the bard would just wave him away and say everything was fine and he doesn’t have it in him to argue right now.

They make their way back to the path and begin the slow march forward, leaving the pretty little clearing and the babbling creek behind.

**OOOOO**

The rain comes much sooner than expected.

It starts as a light shower, barely noticeable at first and just enough to dampen the dusty path they’re walking on. The wind picks up a bit and begins rustling the trees overhead, littering the ground ahead of them with a thin layer of large, wet leaves. It’s not unpleasant, not at first, and the rain is little more of an annoyance rather than an obstacle.

It starts getting heavier the longer they walk, the dark, heavy clouds overhead seeming to dip lower toward the ground. The first band of showers knocks the heat out of the air and a cool, damp wind follows along behind it. It warns of a cold, wet night ahead and does not bode well for the trio of travelers.

“We need to find shelter soon,” Geralt says once it becomes clear that the rain won’t be letting up anytime in the near future. “It will probably rain all night.”

“Lucky us,” Jaskier mutters off to his right, wrapping his arms a little tighter around himself. The temperature has already dropped noticeably since the first band of showers passed through and the air feels heavy and damp with the threat of more rain coming. A low, rumbling report of thunder drives that point home even further and the rain begins coming down a little harder.

It quickly becomes apparent that the rain isn’t the only thing they need to worry about. The shallow, winding creek bed to their right begins to swell as it fills with water, creeping up toward the embankment. The water turns dark and choppy and if the rain keeps up there’s a good chance the pleasant little creek they had been walking next to all morning will turn into a flash flood and transform the creek bed into muddy rip current of debris and undertows. The path ahead seems to grow narrower as the water rises beside them and it’s only a matter of time before the creek breaks its banks entirely.

The rain is starting to come down heavier now, toppling through the trees overhead with fat, stinging drops. It does an excellent job of washing away the top layer of dirt and soil from the narrow path, revealing a slick layer of wet, slippery clay beneath. Coupled with the swirling eddies from the rising creek, there’s a very good chance the path could wash away beneath them.

Jaskier knows this because he nearly falls in.

Geralt is a few steps ahead of him, slowly and carefully leading Roach down the slippery, narrow path. He’s taking one slow step after another, not willing to risk the horse slipping and breaking a leg as she walks. Jaskier is right behind them, following along closely and trying to shield his eyes from the stinging rain pelting them from above. He takes another step and suddenly the ground gives way beneath him, crumbling down into the creek from where the water has washed away a large chunk of the embankment.

Several things happen all at once, none of which are good.

Jaskier lets out a startled yelp as the ground gives way and wheels his arms frantically trying to keep himself upright. Geralt sees him out of the corner of his eye and lunges back toward him, grabbing a thick fistful of the bard’s shirt to keep him from tumbling into the rushing water. He wheels him around, away from the water, and the quick movement causes them both to slip and tumble to their knees onto the muddy path.

Another crack of thunder splits the sky overhead and Roach rears nervously, her hooves slipping against the slick clay. Geralt is on his feet again an instant later, rushing to grab the reins and place a soothing hand on the frightened horse’s side. His injured leg is throbbing viciously now, the stitches tight and painful from the sudden movement, and he can’t tell if it’s started bleeding again or not. He’s overcome with irritation for a quick moment, both with the weather and the situation they’ve found themselves in, and he rounds on Jaskier in annoyance.

“Watch where you’re-!” he shouts but stops instantly when he sees the bard still on the ground.

Jaskier is on his knees in the mud, one hand gripping the ground tightly while the other is wrapped around his waist. His teeth are clenched, eyes squeezed shut, and it looks like he’s doing his best not to be sick.

Geralt's irritation fades instantly and he rushes back to the bard, dropping down to one knee beside him. “What happened?”

The bard shakes his head once and tries to steady his breathing. “It’s nothing, just the scratches from the other night. I think they reopened when you grabbed me.”

The Witcher frowns and reaches forward, gently pulling Jaskier’s hand away from his injured side. He’s alarmed to see one whole side of his shirt dyed a gruesome shade of pink, the fabric bright and blotchy with watery blood. He remembers the wounds from their encounter with the bauk but he hadn’t been thinking about it when he made a blind grab to keep the bard from toppling into the creek.

It’s obvious they can’t travel any further, not with Jaskier bleeding and the creek continuing to rise beside them. They need to find shelter, now, otherwise the storm will bring the shuddering canopy of trees right down on top of them.

Geralt surveys the area quickly, looking for anything that might provide decent, dry cover.

A range of steep, sloping hills juts up to their left, the terrain rocky and uneven, but with any luck they may be able to find some kind of shelter up on higher ground. If anything it will at least get them away from the treacherous creek-turned-churning-river.

He looks up into the hills and sees a large darkened alcove of rock dug away into the hillside. The rain is cascading over the opening, indicating some kind of recess behind the waterfall that’s formed at the mouth. It looks like a cave, tucked away and nestled within the rocky slopes surrounding it. There’s no way to tell how deep or wide it is inside but it’s their best option at the moment.

“We need to get up there,” he tells Jaskier, pointing toward the opening in the hillside.

The bard winces and tries to follow where he’s pointing. “Where?”

Geralt pulls Jaskier to his feet and points toward the opening again. “Up there. Go, I’m right behind you.”

Jaskier nods and takes a few shaky steps toward a relatively level part of the embankment and cautiously begins the ascent. Geralt follows along behind him, slowly and carefully leading Roach up the steep slope.

The ground rises and falls in increments, leveling out for a few feet before rising sharply again a few feet later. It’s not an impossible climb and they could have made much better time if they weren’t blinded by the rain. By the time they reach the cave and stagger through the waterfall at the opening, they’re soaked, cold, and exhausted.

The cave is much larger than it looks, extending deep into the hillside around it. The walls are mostly smooth and there is enough manmade, calculated leveling of the cave floor to indicate that it had probably been used as a shelter before. A few large stalactites hang from the ceiling overhead like rocky chandeliers and the walls round off into a dead end about sixty-five feet inside. The cave is cool and dark, dim, grey-filtered light peeking in from the opening, but the inside is dry and safe.

Geralt sets to work removing Roach’s saddle and setting out the saddle bags. Each bag is relatively waterproof so the clothing inside should be much drier than the ones they’re wearing now. He also unwraps a large bundle of dry kindling and bunches it together on the cave floor for a fire. This isn’t the first time he’s gotten caught in the rain and he learned early on to keep at least one fire’s worth of kindling preserved and dry at all times. They’ll need more before the night is over but this is enough to get a fire started for now.

The floor of the cave is a little damp from the wind and rain outside so it takes a minute for the flames to catch on the dry wood but once it does the fire crackles to life brightly.

The opening of the cave is large enough that they don’t have to worry about being overcome by the smoke and they can build the fire higher when they need to.

Fire started and Roach safe (though pissed because she’s wet), Geralt turns his attention back to Jaskier.

The bard is busying himself unpacking the saddlebags and laying out their supplies when Geralt stops him and drags him over to the fire.

“Sit,” he instructs, handing him a folded blanket and pointing to the floor. Jaskier knows better than to argue so he does as he’s told and slowly sinks down onto the floor, trying and failing to hide the grimace on the way down. It’s not lost on Geralt, however, and he frowns as he lowers himself down to one knee next to the younger man.

He rolls the edge of his shirt up to get a better look at the wounds and feels his frown deepen at the sight. The bleeding has slowed but the gashes are deep and ugly, the bloody wounds standing out in stark contrast against the bard’s pale skin. The skin around them is red and bruised and at the moment it's hard to tell how much of that is from the watery blood staining his skin and how much is from the wound itself. A wad of damp, bloody bandages tumbles out from under his shirt when it’s raised, loosened by the rain and by the Witcher’s frantic grab earlier. The wounds are by no means life-threatening but they definitely need to be cleaned and re-bandaged.

Geralt pushes himself up, ignoring the way his own injuries flare and throb as he does, and walks over to one of the saddlebags. The physician had sent them with a cloth bundle filled with salves and poultices for their various wounds. Theoretically they would help with the healing process but he thinks they'll mostly just helped relieve pain. He grabs a small jar filled with something thick and herbal and a handful of clean, dry bandages and goes back to Jaskier.

The younger man has managed to wrestle his wet shirt off and now sits half-dressed and shivering in front of the fire. The flickering shadows dip in and out around the curves of his features, making him look pale and gaunt in the dull light of the cave. He hisses quietly when Geralt kneels down beside him again and carefully lifts his arm but otherwise stays still while the Witcher tends to the wounds.

Geralt takes a large glob of the thick paste in the jar and rubs it into the wounds carefully, muttering an apology when Jaskier bites back a whimper. The gashes hadn’t been deep enough to require stitches but they cut through a several layers of soft tissue and would take a while to heal on their own naturally. He knows that Jaskier will either gripe continuously about the scars they leave behind or will use them as a prop to gain the sympathy and affection of whoever he is pursuing at the time.

Once the wounds have been treated, Geralt covers them with clean bandages and passes Jaskier a dry shirt from their bags. He turns his back while the bard strips out of his cold, wet clothes and removes his own clothing as well, exchanging them for a drier set from the bag.

The rain and thunder continue to roil outside but the cave stays dry and warm thanks to the fire. For a while they sit and watch as the storm continues to batter the forest outside, too cold and weary to do much of anything else. There will be no hunting or fishing tonight but they have enough supplies to cover them for the next few days if need be. Getting back down to the path once the storm passes will be difficult, the trail up to the cave full of loose rocks and slippery clay, but it’s not something they have to worry about now. It will be hours before the storm blows over and as long as the cave stays dry it’s best to stay where they are.

Dusk falls a short time later and the dark, cloudy skies get even darker as the sun begins to set. The rain slows briefly just before nightfall and Geralt is able to quickly duck outside and find a few larger pieces of wood they can use for the fire. He’ll have to strip it down later and pull away the wet outer bark but it will help keep the fire burning for several more hours.

The temperature drops again once the sun sets completely and they lay out their bedrolls close to the fire to stay warm. Geralt digs into one of the bags and pulls out a few strips of cured venison and a piece of dense, dry bread. He breaks the bread in half and passes it to Jaskier, handing him a few strips of the venison as well. The bard accepts it with a nod but then picks at the food with only mild interest.

“If the storm clears by tomorrow we’ll be able to hunt,” Geralt tells him, biting off a chunk of the dry bread and choking it down. It’s thick and crumbly and tastes an awful lot like sawdust. “We’ll restock our supplies when we reach the city; we have plenty of money from the last job.”

This garners him a wan smile from the bard. “You and I both know you didn’t take that money,” he chides lightly, taking a small bite of venison before setting the food down on his bedroll, clearly uninterested in eating at the moment. “Those people needed it a lot more than we did but you’re right, we have plenty.”

He turns then and stretches out onto the bedroll, keeping his right arm wrapped loosely across his waist. He lets out a soft hiss when the motion pulls against his wounds but settles after a minute.

“You’re sure you’re alright?” Geralt asks, not missing the way Jaskier squirms and fidgets for a moment to find a comfortable position.

Jaskier offers another muted smile and nods. “I’m fine,” he assures him, pillowing a folded blanket beneath his head. “Just tired is all. Getting caught in a rainstorm and nearly falling into a raging river tends to take a lot out of you.”

“Still more of a creek than a river.”

“Don’t be an ass.”

Geralt allows a small smirk at the comment. “Get some sleep, I’ll keep watch.”

Jaskier doesn’t need any further convincing and is sound asleep within minutes, snoring softly by the fire.

Geralt watches him for a long time, trying to determine if the bard’s unusual pallor is a trick of the light or if there’s something else going on. He hadn’t noticed any other injuries when he was dressing the wounds and the gashes themselves looked clean enough. He understands Jaskier’s point though, the day’s walk and the cold rain have left him feeling heavy and drained as well.

Still, he can’t quite convince himself that it’s the only reason.

Quietly, so as not to wake the sleeping bard, he creeps over to the younger man’s bedroll and lays the back of his hand against his forehead. Jaskier is warm, his skin damp and a little clammy from the rain, but there are no outward signs of illness or fever. He can smell the sharp, metallic tang of blood in the air, hovering close around the bandaged wounds, but it’s muted and dulled from the smell of rain and smoke. Jaskier is still a little too pale for his liking but his breathing is normal and aside from being wet and tired Geralt can’t find anything wrong with him.

He convinces himself that he’s overthinking things and is just hyper aware of the fact that they’re stuck in a cave during a hellacious storm. Jaskier is fine and he’s pretty sure the bard would tell him if he wasn’t. Back when they first began traveling together he got a splinter in his hand that he bitched about continuously for three days before Geralt pulled the damn thing loose so there’s no reason to think he wouldn’t say something if he felt sick or injured in any way.

He stands and makes his way back over to his own bedroll, resolving to let Jaskier sleep while he can. He’ll be back to his usual loquacious self by the next day and then Geralt will be stuck wishing for the peace and quiet again. Jaskier is fine but Geralt keeps watch anyway, sitting back and listening as the storm continues to rage outside the safety of the cave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys! More to come soon! :D


	4. Field Medicine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fever strikes sometime in the middle of the night, sudden and sweltering.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everyone! I hope you're doing well! Fair warning for this chapter, guys: there are some pretty gnarly wound descriptions and some gross stuff to follow so if you're squeamish or squicky maybe proceed with caution! It doesn't take up a lot room but it's there and it's pretty heinous. 
> 
> Also for any of my readers who are participating in protests or demonstrations this week please be careful and take care of yourselves!!

Jaskier is most assuredly not fine.

The fever strikes sometime in the middle of the night, sudden and sweltering. The rain has slowed to a steady, gentle shower and a cool, damp breeze drifts into the cave, adding the barest hint of a chill to the warm humidity created by the fire. Geralt is staring out into the darkness beyond the mouth of the cave, absently cleaning the blade of his sword, when he suddenly becomes aware of a noise.

It’s a soft, shuffling sound, like cloth scraping over stone, and he looks across the fire to see that Jaskier is shivering. Despite his closeness to the fire, the bard is curled in on himself and shaking like he’s been doused with freezing water. He’s managed to wrestle his way out from under the blanket he’d been using, the cover discarded in a wadded heap at his feet. He mumbles something in his sleep, a soft slurry of words that sounds like nothing but noise.

Geralt frowns and pushes himself up, wincing as it jostles his leg. He lays his sword down on top of his bedroll and walks over to the shivering bard. He stoops down to grab the wadded blanket and moves to re-cover the younger man but stops once he gets closer.

Jaskier is pale in the flickering light of the fire but his cheeks are flushed an alarming shade of pink. His eyes shift and move rapidly behind closed lids and his hands are curled tightly against his chest like he’s desperately trying to conserve body heat.

Geralt curses under his breath and drops the blanket again, dropping down to his knee next to Jaskier. He lays his hand against the bard’s forehead and jerks it back a second later from the intense heat radiating off of him.

“Shit,” he mutters, carefully rolling Jaskier onto his back and cupping his hand against his feverish cheek. “Jaskier, wake up.”

For a moment nothing happens; Jaskier mutters something unintelligible again and his eyes roam sightlessly behind his eyelids.

Geralt growls and tries again, this time patting the bard’s cheek just hard enough to sting. “Jaskier!”

It has the desired effect and Jaskier winces and then blinks hazily up at him. It takes a troubling amount of time for the bard to focus and when he does his eyes are glassy and distant.

“G’ralt…?” he mumbles, frowning in confusion up at the Witcher. “Why’re you hitting me?”

“I needed you to wake up.”

“And violence was the answer?” Jaskier asks, his expression halfway between irritation and amusement. “We need t’ work on your anger issues…” he fades off, his eyes beginning to slip closed again and it takes every ounce of self control Geralt has not to shake him.

“Jaskier!” he barks instead, causing the bard to jump and flinch.

“What? You’re so loud…”

“Stay awake.”

“‘M awake.”

“Open your eyes.”

Jaskier blinks up at him again, his gaze unfocused and tracking around the room.

Geralt cups his hand against his cheek again in an effort to ground him. “Hey, look at me,” he says, moving just slightly so he dips into the bard’s line of sight. “Look at me, Jaskier.”

“I ‘m lookin’ at you, Ger’lt, and you’re very handsome.”

The Witcher sighs. “You have a fever.”

Jaskier shakes his head slightly. “Can’t have a fever,” he argues weakly as he continues to shiver. “‘M freezing.”

“That’s because of the fever.”

The bard looks affronted. “Well that’s rude.”

It’s no use arguing; Jaskier is delirious and barely conscious and trying to convince him that the chills and fever were connected was more trouble than it’s worth. Geralt can’t risk letting the fever get any higher though so he gently slips his hands under Jaskier’s arms and hauls the bard, bedroll and all, away from the fire. Jaskier, for his part, whimpers a bit at being pulled away from the heat source when he was clearly convinced he was freezing to death but doesn’t put up too much of a fight.

Geralt lays him out across the bedroll again and begins carefully removing his shirt, doing his best not to jostle the feverish bard too much. The heavier clothing he’s wearing does nothing but lock in heat which is the exact opposite of what Jaskier needed. He needs to bring down his body temperature and one of the best ways to do that was to expose skin.

“Could’ve just said you hated my clothes,” Jaskier mumbles blearily when Geralt tosses his shirt to the side where the blanket lays discarded. “Don't' have’ta throw them away.”

“I’m not throwing them away,” Geralt tells him, moving on to divest him of the heavy trousers he’s wearing as well. He leaves the thin leggings underneath for modesty’s sake and also because lying completely nude on the cold, stone floor of a cave would be uncomfortable.

“I’m trying to keep your brain from boiling out of your skull,” he says, reaching over and grabbing the wadded blanket and folding it in half deftly before laying it across Jaskier’s hips. He needs to bring his body temperature down but not so fast that it’s even more detrimental to his already compromised health. “But your clothes _are_ terrible.”

“Y’re such an ass,” Jaskier tells him as his eyes begin to slip shut again.

“Don’t go to sleep,” Geralt tells him but he doesn’t make an effort to keep him awake either as he stands and makes his way over to the saddlebags. He rummages through one of them and pulls out a thin envelope with a fine ground power tucked inside.

Back when it became apparent that Jaskier was either too stupid or too stubborn for his own good and was going to insist on following him around like a lost child, Geralt made it a point to start gathering tinctures and remedies for human ailments anytime they passed through a decent sized market. Jaskier was young and clumsy and tended to get himself into more trouble than he was worth so it behooved his weary companion to ensure they traveled with a well-stocked medical kit.

Geralt didn’t dare use any of his own potions for the bumps and bruises of men. The potions he used for himself were much stronger and frankly much more dangerous for normal human consumption and he’s not exactly sure what would happen if someone like Jaskier ingested any of it. It stood an equal chance of healing him or killing him and it was a gamble Geralt wasn’t willing to take. So instead he stocked up on medicinal powders and oils, liniments and salves created by humans for humans because he knew they were at least moderately safe (even if some of them were mixed with a healthy dose of potash and silt).

The powder in the envelope is a combination of fine ground willow bark and crushed elderflower, a potent combination for fevers and pain. Thankfully Jaskier is heartier than he looks and it’s not something he’s had to use very often so there should be plenty to make a few cups of very strong tea that will hopefully bring down the bard’s fever.

He digs a metal cup out of the same bag and pours a careful amount of the powder into it. The apothecary he’d bought the powder from had provided some kind of measurements upon purchase but he’s operating on instincts and estimates right now. He tucks the envelope back into the bag and takes the cup to the mouth of the cave, stepping out into the persistent rain and holding it up so it can fill with cold, clean water. It’s too risky to try to venture back down toward the creek at the moment and even if he could the water is probably too full of mud and debris to be safe to drink.

Once the cup is full he walks back inside and sets it next to the fire to warm. He does remember the apothecary saying that the mixture was stronger and tended to work faster when it was warm and he’s willing to put that to the test now.

Jaskier has fallen asleep again or maybe he’s unconscious, it’s hard to tell. It’s for the best though; this next part will be unpleasant.

He lifts the younger man’s arm carefully so he can get a better look at his wounded side. The bandages are damp when he touches them, a worrying sign already. He’d made sure they were dry before he applied them which meant that either they had somehow gotten wet while Jaskier was laying here in a dry cave or there was a substantial amount of discharge from the wounds beneath the wrappings. They hadn’t looked infected a few hours ago but he knows how quickly that can change.

Sure enough, the slashes are swollen and oozing a foul, yellowish pus when he pulls the bandages away. The skin around the wounds is bright red and burning to the touch and there's a sweet, sickly smell of infection hovering around the bandages when he removes them. The wounds had stopped bleeding hours ago but the ripped tissue underneath is bright red and exposed and Geralt is beginning to wonder if the wounds had ever started to scab naturally or if they had just remained an open breeding ground for bacteria all this time.

He curses under his breath and very carefully rolls Jaskier onto his uninjured side so he can see the wounds better. The slashes are long, the skin split into deep, jagged trenches that extend from his lower ribs clear around to his lower back. They’re very similar to the ones Geralt has in his leg, deep and ugly, and the edges of each gash are swollen and trying to roll out, effectively widening the wounds even more. He quickly comes to the conclusion that either the salve the physician had sent them with was useless or the infection had already advanced to the point where it was completely ineffective. Whatever the reason, Jaskier’s wounds are clearly infected and he’s in serious trouble.

The deepest gash in the middle is the worst and the skin at the lower tip of the wound where it curves around toward Jaskier’s back is grotesquely swollen and puckered like it can’t decide whether it wants to attempt healing itself or split apart at the seams. The underlying tissue is deeply inflamed, the puckered edges of the wound sealing over itself and creating an abscess of bacteria and pus inside. Geralt knows he needs to clean it out but he’s also well aware of how much that’s going to hurt.

He sighs heavily, breathes the word “fuck” a few times, and makes his way over to the saddle bags once again to find a knife. There’s no quick, painless way of doing this and he’s trying to mentally prepare himself for what’s about to occur. He grabs a knife, a short, deadly sharp blade he keeps on him almost all the time, and a scrap of leather from the bottom of the bag. It’s not perfect but hopefully it will keep Jaskier from breaking his teeth while this is happening. Items in hand, he walks back to where his unconscious companion is still laying and slowly kneels down next to him.

If Destiny had ever offered to be kind, he hoped it would be in this moment and that Jaskier would remain unconscious through what was about to happen. But he also knows that Destiny is a cruel, fickle bitch and if she had any decency at all they wouldn’t be in this mess in the first place. So Geralt says fuck Destiny, passes his knife through the flames to sterilize it, and then presses the sharp tip into Jaskier’s open wound.

The bard comes awake instantly, screaming and thrashing, and it’s only the Witcher’s quick reflexes that keep him from accidentally stabbing his friend in the kidney. He reacts quickly, swooping one arm under Jaskier’s body and pulling him into a tight embrace against his chest.

Jaskier keeps thrashing, delirious and completely unaware of his surroundings; all his brain can latch onto is _hot, sharp, pain_.

“Jaskier, stop,” Geralt tells him firmly, his lips brushing right at the top of the bard’s ear. “You’re safe, stop moving.”

Jaskier’s frantic flailing slows and one hand grips Geralt’s elbow weakly. “G’ralt...what…?” he mumbles, still not completely aware of his surroundings but aware enough to know Geralt is the one holding him.

“Your wounds are infected,” the Witcher tells him bluntly, loosening his hold slightly when Jaskier begins to relax against him. “I need to clean them but…” he sighs, the breath rustling the bard’s still-damp hair. “I’ll be honest with you, it’s going to hurt.”

Jaskier tenses at the words and his grip tightens on Geralt’s elbow for a few seconds. Finally, his grip loosens and he nods shakily. “What should I do?”

“Hold as still as you can,” Geralt tells him as he gently lowers him back down onto the bedroll. “I’ll try to be as quick but I need you to hold still so I don’t make it worse.” He presses the strip of leather into Jaskier’s palm and squeezes his hand reassuringly. “Bite down on this if you need to.”

Jaskier nods shakily and slips the leather into his mouth, steeling himself for what’s to come. “Do it,” he mutters behind clenched teeth.

Geralt takes a slow, steadying breath and readjusts his grip on the knife. He passes his fingers through Jaskier’s hair in a vain attempt at soothing him and before turning his attention to the task at hand. He needs to be careful but he also needs to move quickly; prolonging the experience could send Jaskier into shock and he can’t risk that.

He takes another breath and lowers the knife.

The first cut it shallow, just enough to pierce the swollen skin at the furrowed tip of the wound. Thick, yellowish pus begins oozing from the incision immediately, leaving a thin, wet trail down the bard’s feverish skin.

Jaskier groans painfully behind clenched teeth and goes rigid but manages to stay still. In spite of the pain, he’s all too aware of how close the blade is to several vulnerable internal organs and that any sudden movement could lead to an even worse problem.

The next cut is deeper, passing cleanly through the skin and into the abscess below. Blood wells to the surface, mingling with the discharge into a foul, milky pink fluid, and the heady smell of infection gets thicker in the air. Geralt scrubs at the newly bleeding wound with a piece of clean cloth, wiping away layers of pus and blood as it continues to well to the surface.

Jaskier stiffens under his touch and whimpers, biting down hard on the strip of leather between his teeth. He’s shivering now, whether from pain or the fever it’s hard to tell, but it makes Geralt’s job more difficult. He places a steadying hand on the bard’s shoulder and picks up the knife again.

Another small cut releases more the bloody mixture and Geralt pushes down around the edges of the wound to help it drain. Jaskier’s skin is still alarmingly hot beneath his hands and he tries not to think about what kind of lasting damage that will create if he doesn’t get his fever down. Cleaning the wounds will help but it’s only part of what needs to be done.

He drains the wound as much as he’s able to and probes the area carefully with the tip of his knife. There’s something still embedded in the wound, past the abscess, and Jaskier hisses in pain when the knife brushes over it. Whatever it is, it’s prevented the wound from healing properly and is more than likely feeding the infection even more. He needs to get it out but that means cutting deeper into the skin and asking Jaskier to endure even more pain. It can’t be helped though, not if he hopes to counteract the infection, and Geralt tightens his grip again.

When the knife passes through the skin this time, Jaskier screams.

It’s a short, awful sound and he can’t help but try to pull away from the source of pain. Geralt apologizes under his breath and holds him still, pushing the blade deeper into the skin and opening up the wound even further. He can almost see what’s embedded below the surface, he’s almost there-

“Stop,” Jaskier begs, trembling all over and suppressing a shuddering sob between his teeth. “Please stop.”

“I’ve almost got it,” Geralt assures him, using the tip of the blade to coax the object closer to the surface.

Jaskier lets out another agonizing yelp and bucks against him, struggling to get away. “Geralt, please! Stop! I can’t-!”

“Shh,” the Witcher shushes him gently, finally working the tip of the object out of the inflamed tissue below. “Stay strong, Jaskier, I’m almost done…”

He manages to pin the edge of the object to the blade with his thumbnail, careful not to touch the wound more than necessary. From what he can tell it’s a piece of cloth, more than likely a strip of Jaskier’s shirt that was forced into the wound when the bauk clawed him, and it's embedded firmly into the underlying tissue. Geralt gets as good grip as he can and pulls hard, yanking the gory strip of cloth out of the wound and causing it to begin bleeding again heavily.

Jaskier gasps raggedly and sobs, shaking all over as the blood streaks down his back and pools on the bedroll beneath him. His face is streaked with tears and his skin is slick with a cold sweat from the pain.

“Shh,” Geralt shushes again, pressing clean bandages to the wound and holding them tightly to stop the bleeding. “It’s over,” he assures his shivering companion. “It’s done.”

He grabs the metal cup from its place by the fire and pulls it over next to them, scooping Jaskier back into his arm as carefully as he can and propping him up against his chest. The bard is heavy and limp against him, still shivering from head to toe, and he’s barely conscious but Geralt can’t let him sleep yet.

“Here,” he says, leaning Jaskier back against him a bit more and helping him sit upright. He presses the cup into his trembling hands and holds them steady. “Drink this, it will help with the pain.”

Jaskier shakes his head weakly, his head lolling loosely with the movement. “I can’t,” he whispers, teeth chattering as the shivers continue to wrack his body.

“Just try,” the Witcher says, guiding the bard’s trembling hands. “Please.”

Jaskier shivers again but nods and brings the cup to his lips. The cup sloshes violently from the shakiness of his hands and some of the tea splashes across his bare chest but he’s able to bring it to his mouth without spilling too much of it. He manages to take about three large gulps of the tea before breaking off into a choking fit which leaves him gasping and wheezing.

Geralt takes the cup from his trembling hands and sets it back down on the ground. He holds Jaskier against his chest for a long while after that, waiting silently for the bard’s ragged breathing to steady. His heart is thumping a wild staccato rhythm against his palm and Geralt isn’t sure how much of that is from the fever and how much is from pain.

Eventually Jaskier’s breathing levels out and his body gets heavy and limp in a way that suggests he’s lost consciousness again. Geralt gently lowers him back down to the ground and pulls the blanket up over his legs. The wounds have finally stopped bleeding but they’re still bright red and swollen, the skin around them hot to the touch. He’ll apply some more of the physician’s salve later but for now he’ll let Jaskier sleep and hope that the tea will work to fight off the fever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys! More to come soon! :D


	5. Trolls, Trouble, and Other Hallucinations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He knows something is wrong because he can hear Roach whinnying fitfully even before he reaches the cave. He curses under his breath and breaks into a run, slipping and sliding and sloshing water as he does. 
> 
> He clears the mouth of the cave and staggers to a stop.
> 
> Jaskier is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello my darlings! I hope you're all doing well! 
> 
> Let me just go ahead and say that I'm a complete, unrepentant hoe for delirious hallucinations and vivid fever dreams and will include them anywhere and everywhere I can. Toss in a concerned yet exasperated caretaker? *chef's kiss* So what I'm saying is this chapter is pretty self-serving lol. Hope you all enjoy it! :D

The fever gets worse.

Geralt spends the rest of the night and clear into the next day fighting a losing battle against the fever and infection that are still raging through the Jaskier’s body. At times Jaskier acts like he’s freezing, shivering so hard his teeth rattle inside his mouth. Other times he’s restless and fidgety, shifting fitfully against the bedroll like the soft material was suddenly composed of glass shards. He mumbles to himself and sometimes it sounds like words but they’re never coherent enough to be understood. He never regains consciousness, not fully, and Geralt would be lying if he said he wasn’t concerned.

He’s managed to get a few more swallows of the elderflower and willow bark tea into the bard but it's not enough to do anything significant. Whatever medicinal properties the combination might have are lost on the fact that he can’t get Jaskier to regain consciousness long enough to drink it on his own. His few attempts at coaxing the tea down Jaskier’s throat usually just leaves him choking and sputtering with most of the tea spilling down the front of his chest. Eventually he abandons the tea and moves to slipping a small amount of the powder directly under Jaskier’s tongue in the hopes that it will have some effect that way.

However, as the hours continue to pass with no improvement, Geralt begins to get desperate. He needs to get Jaskier’s body cooled down somehow but the warm humidity of the cave is preventing that from happening. He briefly considers trying to carry him down to the creek but knows that moving him around too much, especially as sick as he is, would likely do more harm than good. Eventually he settles on just dragging Jaskier, bedroll and all, to the mouth of the cave where a cool, damp breeze cuts through the hills.

The heavier bands of the storm had passed the night before but a cold, steady rain still showered the forest around them. The clouds above are not as dark and steely as they had been the day before but they’re grey and heavy and threaten hours, if not days, of more rain to come. It was a silent but sober reminder of the fact that they were stuck here until the weather began to clear.

Geralt positions Jaskier as close as he can to the mouth of the cave without getting the bard wet. He walks back to the saddlebags, retrieves several swaths of clean fabric he’d been using for bandages, and then walks back to the mouth of the cave, holding them out into the steady downfall of rain outside. Once they’re wet enough, he wrings them out deftly and kneels down next to Jaskier, laying the damp cloths across his chest, neck, and forehead.

Jaskier flinches and tries to draw away from the cold contact against his skin but Geralt plants a firm, soothing hand in the center of his chest and holds him down. The bard relaxes instantly and goes still.

They stay like that for hours, sitting at the mouth of the cave while the rain continues to fall outside. There had been a time in his life when Geralt would have relished this kind of peace and quiet, the cool air against his face and the hypnotic patter of rain through the trees. But right now he thinks he’d give his last coin to hear Jaskier speak again. It’s not something he would ever admit to, of course, but the silence is somehow the worst thing about this situation. He’s grown to begrudgingly accept the fact that Jaskier hardly ever shuts up and the bard’s constant rambling usually just drones in the back of his mind like white noise.

But now he’s quiet and it somehow feels like the whole world has gone quiet.

It’s a dangerous line of work, being friends with a Witcher, and Jaskier has ended up with his fair share of injuries throughout their travels. They’re usually minor, bumps and bruises here and there and sometimes the odd concussion because he didn’t duck when Geralt told him to, but he’s never been hurt like this before. He’s never gone down and stayed down and that’s the biggest problem here because Geralt is so used to him bouncing back that he doesn’t know what to do when he doesn’t.

The thing about Jaskier is that he’s a lot stronger than he looks and yeah, he’ll bitch and whine about whatever injury he’s nursing after a more physical hunt, but it’s mostly for show and sympathy rather than out of actual distress. He’s resilient and recovers quickly and he always gets back to his feet with a breathless little laugh and a surprised grin like he can’t believe they survived whatever horrifically dangerous creature/spirit/angry mob they were facing at the time.

But he’s not bouncing from this; if anything it seems that he’s getting worse and Geralt doesn’t know what else to do.

He briefly considers tucking the bard back into the cave and riding back to the town where all this started and dragging the physician back up here with him but he abandons the idea for a number of reasons. First, he can’t bear the thought of leaving Jaskier alone and defenseless for the hours it would take him to get back and he hates the idea of the bard waking up confused and delirious in a strange, unfamiliar place. Second, as much as he wants to blame the physician for the state of Jaskier’s injuries, he knows he can’t hold the man responsible.

The physician had cleaned their wounds thoroughly and did everything he could to ensure they would heal properly; he had no way of knowing that a piece of Jaskier’s shirt had been driven deep into the underlying tissue and had been left festering and feeding an infection neither of them knew anything about (hell, Geralt didn’t even find out about it until a few hours ago).

Geralt also knows that if he hadn’t insisted they leave as soon as they did, if they had stayed in the town just a little while longer, that he could have dragged his stubborn bard back to the physician for treatment once it became clear an infection was setting in. So no, he can’t blame him for the situation they’ve found themselves in but he thinks the man would probably have some ideas on how to further treat the infection because Geralt has been wracking his brain since the night before and he’s coming up with nothing.

He removes the cloths and rewets them outside the cave, wringing them out and placing them back on Jaskier’s fevered skin. He lays the largest one across the bard’s torso, hoping to cover as much surface area as possible, and pauses to rest his hand against his chest. Jaskier’s breathing has become shaky and shallow since the night before and his heartbeat is still a rapid, shuddering jump against his palm. His skin is still dangerously warm and in spite of all the Witcher’s ministrations, it doesn’t seem the fever has gone down at all and continues to just simmer and smolder beneath the surface.

He sighs and pulls his hand away, draping another one of the cloths across the bard’s too warm brow. He stands and collects a small bowl he’d set just outside the mouth of the cave to collect rain water and carries it back inside, dropping back down onto the ground beside Jaskier. His own wounds have improved significantly from the day before, the stiffness of the damaged muscle loosening back to a normal range of motion. He doesn’t know how much of it is from the physician’s treatment and how much can be attributed to his enhanced healing abilities but he’s thankful that it’s one less thing to worry about now.

He stretches his injured leg out in front of him so it doesn’t tighten up again and sets the bowl next to Jaskier. He dips his fingers into the bowl and lets the water slowly drip into the bard’s damp hair.

“You’re a right pain in my ass, you know that?” he mutters to the unconscious bard, watching Jaskier’s face carefully for any hint that he's even heard him. “And I need you to wake up.”  
Jaskier says nothing (Geralt didn’t really expect him to) and the Witcher sighs and goes back to watching the rain in unusually uncomfortable silence.

**OOOOO**

The dull, grey day fades into a dull, grey evening and while the rain never fully stops, it slows to a misty drizzle just as the sky begins to darken. Geralt drags Jaskier back into the cave and repositions him close to the fire. He’s not happy with the idea of bringing Jaskier back into the warm humidity of the cave when his fever was still so high but he’s less happy with the idea of leaving him vulnerable and exposed at the mouth of the cave with night falling.

The bard still hasn’t regained consciousness although he’s mumbled and muttered a few times as the afternoon passed. Geralt isn’t sure if that means he’s closer to waking or simply suffering with fever dreams but he has to force his hopes down each time it happens and Jaskier remains stubbornly unconscious.

He’s made the decision/excuse to venture down to the creek to gather more water and get out of the cave for a bit. Even the large, open space is starting to feel too cramped and he’d be lying if he said he wasn’t feeling just a little edgy and desperate for a change of scenery. The creek is not that far down the hillside and he reasons that now that it’s not pouring it should be easy enough to make his way down there and back without too much trouble.

He tucks Jaskier in as much as he dares while still keeping the majority of the bard’s skin exposed. He’ll only be gone long enough to get water and come right back but he still feels guilty about leaving Jaskier alone even for that short amount of time. He looks over at Roach who’s snuffling around near the saddle bags.

“Keep an eye on him,” he tells her, receiving a soft huff in reply. He smoothes the bard’s damp hair absently before standing, grabbing their waterskins, and making his way out of the cave.

The rocky slope leading down to the creek is slick and difficult to navigate even in marginally better weather. Geralt has to plan each step carefully to avoid slipping on a loose patch of rocks and mud and nearly loses his balance twice. It’s not a far trip from their cave down to the creek but the treacherous conditions of the path leading down takes a while to navigate.

As he gets a little closer to the trail they had been traveling the day before, he catches the salty, unmistakable smell of death lingering in the air and catches sight of the mangled remains of a deer blocking the path. It’s neck is twisted in an unnatural angle and two of its legs are broken in several places. It looks like the poor creature got caught in the storm the night before and was washed down the hillside before it could reach solid ground, breaking its neck on the way down. Flies and other insects have already begun hovering around the body and it won’t be long before other, larger animals come to scavenge the remains.

All the more reason to get the water quickly and get back up to the cave.

The creek has gone down substantially from the day before and the water is clear and cold from the continuous rainfall. It’s still a little too deep and fast to safely step into so Geralt crouches by the bank and carefully lowers the waterskins into the rushing water, filling them to the top. He sets them to the side once they’re full and dips a small pail into the creek as well, scooping up an additional bucketful to bring back up to the cave. The rain water had worked well enough in a pinch but it took a while to get enough to be useful and this will definitely save time.

He slings the waterskins over his shoulder and gets a grip on the pail, slowly and carefully making his way back toward the trail leading back up to the cave. The dead deer means there’s game in the area and while he has enough food for the night he thinks he may have to hunt soon in order to supplement their supplies when they eventually leave the cave. He doesn’t allow himself to think about the possibility of Jaskier not leaving the cave, of the bard succumbing to his fever and being buried somewhere in the rocky slopes outside of the cave.

He actively forces himself to not even entertain the idea, let alone dwell on it, and instead focuses on the climb ahead. He won’t allow that to happen, not while he has any say in the matter, and that resolve quickens his steps as he continues his climb back up the path.

He knows something is wrong because he can hear Roach whinnying fitfully even before he reaches the cave. He curses under his breath and breaks into a run, slipping and sliding and sloshing water as he does. He drops the pail at some point and hears it tumble and clank down the hillside back toward the creek. He doesn’t care, all he can think is that something has happened to Jaskier and he needs to get to him _now_.

He clears the mouth of the cave and staggers to a stop.

Jaskier is gone.

For a moment he just stands there, dumbfounded at the idea that the bard had quite literally up and disappeared in the short time he was gone. He has the horrible, sinking feeling that maybe something snuck into the cave while he was down at the creek and dragged Jaskier away into the wilderness. He’s weak and vulnerable, easy prey for any large predator in the area, and he certainly wouldn’t put up much of a fight in the process…

It’s an awful thought and it twists something deep inside that he doesn’t have a name for.

Roach is stamping at the ground in agitation, tossing her head and huffing at him to _do something, the bard is missing._

He’s still trying to figure out what might have happened in the short time he was gone when he hears something outside the cave. He doesn’t stop to consider what it might be, he drops the waterskins and he runs.

He hears Jaskier before he sees him, the bard’s voice echoing in the darkness outside the cave. The rocky hills around them distort the sound, bouncing it high one second and then low the next, and for a brief moment it’s difficult to determine where it’s coming from. Geralt stops moving and listens, his attention being drawn further up the hill into the darkness. He sees movement and he runs toward it.

Jaskier is staggering up the hill, barefoot, disoriented, and less than half-dressed. He’s muttering feverishly, lost in some kind of conversation with himself (or whoever he thinks he’s speaking to) and it’s nothing short of a miracle that he hasn’t lost his balance and tumbled down the hillside like the unfortunate deer down below.

“Jaskier, stop,” Geralt calls after him, catching up to him easily and reaching out to grab the bard’s wrist. The sudden touch causes Jaskier to flinch and stumble, staggering sideways in alarm like he’s trying to get away.

Geralt catches him easily and holds him steady.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” he asks, equal parts relieved to see his friend up and conscious but utterly confused as to what he’s doing out here stumbling around in the dark.

“Let me go,” Jaskier mumbles, pushing against him weakly. “I have to find him.”

Geralt frowns and doesn’t let go. “Find him? Find who?”

“Let go,” Jaskier says again, pulling a bit more forcefully against the Witcher’s grasp. “Please, he needs my help.”

Geralt takes a closer to look at the struggling bard and sighs softly. The younger man’s eyes are glassy and vacant and he’s either sleepwalking or hallucinating, neither of which are good in conjunction with a high fever. He’s completely disoriented and will more than likely spend the rest of the evening searching the hillside for someone who may or may not even exist unless Geralt puts a stop to it.

“Come on,” Geralt says, stooping down and gently hoisting the bard over one shoulder with little effort. “Whoever you’re looking for can be found in the morning.”

He starts back down the hill toward the cave but finds the journey down much more difficult with a squirming, increasingly distraught bard draped over his shoulder. The younger man is struggling desperately, pushing against his shoulders and back as he tries to break loose. His body is still alarmingly warm against Geralt’s shoulders and his breathing harsh and ragged.

“Stop squirming,” Geralt tells him, tightening his hold on the back of his legs. “You’re going to reopen your wounds.”

Jaskier growls in frustration and pushes hard against the Witcher’s shoulders, gaining absolutely nothing from it. “Let go,” he demands, still trying and failing to break free. “You have to let me find him.”

“You’re not finding anyone,” Geralt tells him, tightening his grip on the bard’s flailing legs again. “You’re coming with me.”

“He needs my help!”

“I’m sure he does.”

“Put me down!”

“Absolutely not.”

“Please!” he begs, practically sobbing this time. “He’s in danger!”

Geralt sighs all the way down to his bones and finally decides to humor Jaskier’s feverish ramblings just as he reaches the mouth of the cave. “Who? Who is in danger?”

“Geralt,” the bard sobs in response. “Geralt is in danger.”

This causes him to freeze momentarily, stopping mid-stride into the cave. That wasn’t the answer he was expecting at all and for a moment he doesn’t know how to respond to it.

Jaskier is hanging on his shoulder like a sack of sand, limp and winded and sniffling quietly as he continues to struggle (however weakly) to break free and go find him. He’s so disoriented and delirious that he doesn’t even realize Geralt is the one holding him, not lost somewhere out in the wild. Whatever nightmarish scenario is running through his fever-addled mind right now, he’s fully convinced that not only is Geralt missing but he’s also in some kind of grave danger that requires the bard’s immediate help.

He shakes his head slowly and walks further into the cave, ducking out of the misty rain outside and back into the dry warmth inside. “I’m fine, Jaskier,” he tells his feverish friend, kneeling carefully to lower Jaskier off his shoulder. “You’re the one in danger right now.”

Jaskier can barely stand on his own, let alone run, but that doesn’t stop him from taking a wobbling lunge for the mouth of the cave the second his feet hit the ground. It’s not coordinated in the least and his legs give out almost immediately and it’s only Geralt’s reflexes and proximity that keep him from tumbling to the ground.

He bites back a curse as the motion jars his injured leg and tamps down the initial surge of irritation that boils to the surface. He can’t be angry at Jaskier; the fever is making him desperate and irrational and he’s still fully convinced that Geralt is either dead or wounded in the forest and that someone (ironically, Geralt) is blocking him from reaching his friend.

He manages to get a better grip on the flighty bard and tilts his head up so he can see him. “Jaskier, look at me,” he says, holding the younger man’s chin in his hand, his fingers resting against the side of his neck to keep his head steady.

Jaskier can’t seem to focus though, his fever-bright, glassy eyes wandering around the room hazily like he’s trying to track something only he can see.

“Look at me,” Geralt says again, shifting just slightly so he’s directly in Jaskier’s line of sight. His skin is still flushed and abnormally hot and his pulse is rapid and chaotic beneath the Witcher’s fingers.

It takes several seconds before recognition finally sinks in and Jaskier looks at him like it’s the first time he’s seen him in ages. He smiles in relief and then his knees buckle and he collapses like every ounce of his remaining strength suddenly rushed from his body. Again, it’s only Geralt’s proximity and instinct that keeps him from falling to the floor.

“I was so worried,” Jaskier mumbles into the side of his neck when Geralt scoops him up into his arm and carries him the rest of the way into the cave. He’s shivering all over, both from exhaustion and the fever, and he’s mumbling hazily about Geralt’s supposed disappearance; he can’t make out a lot of it but he hears something about trolls and realizes that at some point in Jaskier’s fever dreams he must have conjured up the idea that Geralt had been taken by the blood-thirsty creatures. It was a reasonable enough fear to have; they’ve encountered trolls before and they tend to be a nasty lot.

He carries Jaskier back over to the bedroll and carefully lowers him to the ground, gently disentangling the bard’s arms from around his neck. Jaskier is still mumbling fitfully but he stops when Geralt moves away to grab the discarded blanket and catches the Witcher’s wrist with a surprisingly strong grip.

“Don’t go,” he begs, imploring Geralt with fever-bright blue eyes. “They’ll come back for you.”

“No one is coming for me,” Geralt assures him, pulling the blanket over the bard’s shivering body and tucking it around his legs.

“But the trolls-”

“There are no trolls, Jaskier,” Geralt tells him patiently, placing a steadying hand on the younger man’s shoulder to keep him from trying to sit up again. He’s pretty sure his wounds have reopened and he probably needs to change the bandages again but he can’t do that when Jaskier is still hellbent on rushing out into the darkness to protect him from nonexistent trolls. “We’re safe here. I promise.”

“But I saw them,” Jaskier insists adamantly, gripping his wrist like he’s begging him to understand.

Geralt can’t be sure if it’s the fever or a trick of the light but it looks like there are tears in his eyes. He shakes his head slowly and gently pulls the bard’s hand away from his wrist, wrapping his fingers around Jaskier’s hand reassuringly.

“There are no trolls,” he says again, shifting into a more comfortable position on the ground and taking the weight off his injured leg.

He reaches out with his free hand and cards his fingers through the bard’s damp hair soothingly. “You’re very sick and you’re seeing things that aren’t there,” he explains slowly like he’s speaking to a confused, frightened child who just woke up from a nightmare.

In a way, he kind of is.

“We’re safe in here,” he tells him again, watching as Jaskier seems to relax marginally at his words. “And I’ll chase away anything that tries to come inside, trolls or otherwise.”

Jaskier smiles then, a small, tired little thing, and nods. He grips Geralt’s hand tightly, not clinging with the same death grip he’d had before but he holds tight nonetheless. His adventure on the hillside has left him exhausted and trembling and his fragile hold on consciousness is noticeably beginning to weaken.

Geralt starts to pull away (he really wants to get Jaskier to drink some more of that tea before he loses consciousness again) but the bard refuses to let go of his hand. “Please don’t go,” he mumbles, the words coming out in a muddled mess as he tries to speak. “I don’ wanna lose you again…”

Geralt stills and looks back at his feverish friend. Reassurances aside, Jaskier is still convinced that Geralt will disappear again the minute he closes his eyes. Even barely conscious, he won’t rest until he knows Geralt is safe.

It’s extraordinarily humbling to say the least.

The Witcher squeezes his hand and reaches out to smooth the younger man’s hair again. “You won’t lose me,” he promises, breathing as much conviction into the words as he can. “I’m right here. I’m not leaving.”

“Stay,” the bard whispers, his eyes beginning to flutter closed as his grasp on consciousness wanes further.

“I’ll stay,” Geralt tells him, moving his hand down to cup Jaskier’s fevered cheek and causing the bard to blink blearily up at him again. “But if I stay, you have to stay too, understand?”

Jaskier nods and closes his eyes.

“Say it,” Geralt says, shaking him just slightly to get him to open his eyes again. “You stay and I stay.”

“You stay, I stay,” Jaskier parrots back, his teeth chattering softly when he speaks.

“Say it again.”

“You stay, I stay…”

“Again.”

“You stay...I stay…”

He makes him repeat it until Jaskier finally slips under again, too weak and exhausted to stay conscious any longer. He wants the words to be a tether, a promise that keeps the stubborn bard from teetering too close to that deadly edge. There have been very few people Geralt has ever asked to stay in his long, long life but he’s practically begging for Jaskier to do it now. Because maybe he cares for the troublesome bard more than he thought and maybe they’ve traveled together for so long now that he can’t imagine going back to traveling alone. Maybe the idea of losing Jaskier is somehow worse than losing almost anyone else in his life. Whatever the reason, he needs him to stay now and he needs him to survive.

“You stay, I stay,” he says again one more time, smoothing Jaskier’s hair gently as he speaks. The cave grows quiet again, nothing but the crackling of the fire and the soft patter of rain outside to fill the void of silence. Roach watches him from across the cave but even she stays quiet.

“Stay with me.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys! More to come soon!


	6. Medical Maggots and Magic Potions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He stands slowly and makes his way over to the saddle bags, retrieving a few small vials from inside. He’s been avoiding this for as long as he could but his options have effectively run out and this is the very last thing he can think of that might save Jaskier’s life. 
> 
> That is, if it doesn’t kill him first.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fun thing about tumbling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole is that every once in a while you stumble across something equal parts fascinating and wholly disgusting. One minute you're researching Macedonian battlefield medicine and the next you land on a page about maggot therapy. And believe me, it's as terrible as it sounds. This chapter will get pretty gross for a short time so please feel free to skip ahead if need be!
> 
> Also, I know dick all about Witcher potions outside of what can be found in the game play manual; my main takeaway was Witcher potions = dead humans. That said there's a bit of deus ex machina in this chapter simply because I'm making it up on the fly. Creative liberties!
> 
> Enjoy guys! :D

The wounds are festering.

There’s no other word for it. The edges of each gash are blackened and discolored, packed with thick layers of fetid pus. The watery fluid that leaks from the wounds is slick and oily and carries with it the sickening smell of rotting meat. No matter how often he cleans the wounds, how deep he scrubs into the torn, bloody tissue, it seems that Geralt can never get ahead of the infection.

He’s at his wit’s end with it.

The salve the physician sent with them isn’t working, the tea isn’t working, it seems like nothing he does is working and he’s running out of things to try. A very small, nasty voice in his mind tells him that he’s done all he can and that maybe Jaskier is simply fated to be taken by the infection ravaging his body but he refuses to listen. He’s never cared for the wills and whims of Destiny and he’s more than happy to tell it to fuck off now too.

Until the bard stops breathing and goes cold under his hand he refuses to let the infection get the better of him.

He dabs at the wounds again, continuously wiping away the putrid drainage that leaks from them. There’s a definite smell of decay and disease coming from the wounds themselves and it’s beginning to permeate throughout the cave. He briefly considers taking his knife and just carving away the discolored, necrotic tissue but figures the end result would be much more traumatic than it needed to be. Also it wouldn’t do him any good if the infection had moved beyond the initial wound and had become systemic; then it would just be adding injury to injury.

Unfortunately he’s beginning to wonder if that’s what’s happened. Thin, bright red lines are beginning to appear along the edges of the wounds, branching outward like starbursts. It will only be a matter of time before the infection reaches Jaskier’s heart and stops it entirely and Geralt can’t take the chance of waiting any longer.

He knows what he has to do but, like so many things involved in this misadventure, it won’t be pleasant.

He leaves Jaskier under Roach’s watchful eye and ventures out of the cave and back to the trail leading down toward the creek. The rain has finally stopped but the path is still slick and treacherous and it takes a decent amount of concentration to make it down safely. The last thing he needs is to break an ankle and not be able to make it back up to the cave before it’s all said and done.

He finds the deer carcass more or less where it had been the day before, still sprawled across the path at the base of the hill. It’s clear other animals have scavenged the remains and large chunks of flesh have been torn away from the bone in several places. Geralt is less concerned with the larger predators who have already taken their share and more concerned with the smaller ones still eating.

He drops to a crouch beside the carcass, breathing past the heavy stench of death that emanates up from the remains. It only takes seconds to find what he’s looking for, squirming and squiggling in a large cavity torn open in the animal’s side. The maggots are bright white compared to the deep red of muscle tissue and viscera, their tiny squirming bodies splashed pink with blood. There are hundreds of them writhing around in the deer’s body cavity and even more on the ground below it. They’ll continue to mingle and multiply and will more than likely have the majority of the deer carcass broken down within a few days if other animals don’t take it away first.

He reaches into the cavity and grabs a handful of the squiggly little creatures, scooping them into a small pouch and then securing it to his belt. The deer’s body is practically writhing with them so he doubts stealing a few away will damage the ecosystem all that much.

He leaves the deer and carefully makes his way back up the trail to the cave. The long, deep wound in his leg is more or less healed already and aside from some mild stiffness it doesn’t pain him nearly as much as it had before. He estimates that within another day or so the wound will have closed completely and he’ll have one less thing to worry about.

There’s no indication that Jaskier has moved since he left but, then again, Geralt hadn’t really expected him to; the bard has been deep in the throes of unconsciousness for hours now. He looks every bit like a warmed over corpse, eyes sunken and lips bloodless, and it’s only the quick, uneven rise and fall of his chest that assures Geralt he’s even still alive. The fever has been wearing him down with each breath for days now and it won’t be long before his body simply isn’t able to fight it anymore. Geralt is hoping that maybe, just maybe, the maggots will get rid of enough of the infection to buy him a little more time.

He kneels down next to Jaskier and gently rolls the bard onto his uninjured side, leaving the fetid, infected wounds exposed. He’s heard of surgeons using maggots to treat wounds on the battlefield but he’s never seen or tried it for himself. At this point he has nothing left to lose and if this happens to work then it’s all for the better.

He opens the pouch and scoops out a handful of the little worms, rinsing them briefly with a cup of water to get the dirt and deer blood off before he puts them on Jaskier. He places most of them in the deepest, most infected wound and then spreads the rest out over the other two gashes. Then he sits back and allows nature to take its gruesome course.

Almost immediately the little worms begin doing what they do best, squirming and wriggling their way around the oozing, open wounds and eating away at the dead tissue. It’s disgusting to watch and Jaskier would be utterly appalled to learn this is what it’s come to but if it keeps him alive long enough to bitch about it on another day then Geralt will take that chance.

He has no idea if there’s any kind of time limit involved in the practice or not but he figures the longer he leaves them, the better off it will be. So he sits back, listens carefully to the sound of Jaskier’s shallow, ragged breathing, and lets the maggots eat.

**OOOOO**

He leaves the maggots on for the rest of the afternoon, watching with macabre fascination as they work their way around the wounds. They do an admirable job of eating away all the necrotic tissue around the edges of the gashes and then make their way into the infected underlying tissue, leaving it bright and bloody but with no lingering sign infection in their wake. After a few hours the wounds look ten times better than they had that morning.

Unfortunately, Geralt worries it’s still not enough.

The red lines streaking out from the gashes are still there and seem to have gotten brighter and redder since he first noticed them. Not only that, Jaskier’s breathing is beginning to get thin and falter, shuddering out of his lungs in weak, shaky gasps. The fever is still putting an impossible strain on his body and Geralt knows that if he doesn’t act now Jaskier won’t survive much longer.

He stands slowly and makes his way over to the saddle bags, retrieving a few small vials from inside. He’s been avoiding this for as long as he could but his options have effectively run out and this is the very last thing he can think of that might save Jaskier’s life.

That is, if it doesn’t kill him first.

He knows for a fact that the potions and elixirs he carries with him are far too potent for human consumption but he hopes that diluting them and administering a very small microdose might be safe enough to heal Jaskier without causing further damage. Granted, he has no way of knowing if it will work but, once again, he’s out of options.

Roach seems to realize the precariousness of the situation as well and stamps her hoof on the rocky floor of the cave, tossing her head in warning.

Geralt holds up a hand to quiet the agitated horse and gives her a resigned look. “I’m not happy about it either,” he says, running his hand across her flank. “But it’s the only thing that might work.”

Vials in hand, he walks back over to Jaskier and kneels beside him. He grabs the cup from where it has been essentially abandoned next to the fire and tosses out the cold remains of the elderflower and willow bark tea still sitting inside. He rinses it with the waterskin and uncorks the first vial, taking a steadying breath before he begins.

The potions are made specifically for Witchers and can only be purchased from a highly skilled alchemist who knows what they’re doing; just the smallest amount over a rigidly controlled measuring of specialized ingredients is enough to turn a potion into a poison. He’s learned the hard way who to buy from and who to avoid; he’s inadvertently purchased potions that were strong enough to nearly kill him while others were weak to the point of being completely ineffective. The good alchemists can make a good, potent potion which is why he has to be extraordinarily careful when it comes to adding them to the cup.

One drop here, half a drop there, not even half a drop from this one…

He measures the combination as carefully as he can, trying to keep the mixture as diluted as possible while still being effective. He swirls it, adds more water, swirls it again, adds more water. By the time he’s done, the mixture in the cup is a dull, threatening brown and it smells like rusted metal. It’s an incredible gamble and the risk is much higher than he’s comfortable with but the stakes are even higher. He needs this to work and he can’t second guess the decision any longer.

The tricky part is going to be getting Jaskier to swallow the concoction and not choke in the process. The younger man is limp and heavy when Geralt lifts him up and he slumps bonelessly against the Witcher’s chest when he leans him back against him. His head lolls loosely on his neck and he has all the control and animation of a stringless puppet at the moment.

Geralt scoots back until his back is pressed against the wall of the cave, giving him some kind of structure to lean against before he does anything else. He knows how violently the potion can affect his own body and he really has no idea what it will do to Jaskier. All he can hope for is that the bard’s body is strong enough to withstand the powerful effects of the potion and he doesn’t just up and die in the middle of the process.

He tilts Jaskier’s head back, pries open his mouth open carefully, and slowly pours the contents of the cup into his mouth, gently massaging his throat to force him to swallow.  
Aside from a few sputters and coughs, he manages to swallow all of it without trouble and slumps back against Geralt as the Witcher waits for the concoction to take effect.

He doesn’t have to wait long.

Within seconds Jaskier jolts against him, jerking violently to the side like he’s been struck with something. His eyes shoot open and he gasps raggedly, curling in on himself with an agonized groan. One leg shoots out, straight and rigid, and he twists to the side suddenly as if trying to pull away. Geralt bites back a curse and loops both arms tightly around the bard’s middle, pinning his arms to his sides and trying to hold him still. He pushes his back against the wall harder, trying to give himself some kind of leverage against the thrashing bard.

“Geralt...what…” Jaskier gasps, convulsing sharply as another wave of pain ripples through his body. “What...is happening...to me…?”

Geralt doesn’t have an answer for him because he’s not sure himself. He hopes this means the potion is working but he doesn’t know for sure. “You’re healing,” he tells him, praying that’s what’s actually happening. “This was the only way.”

Jaskier convulses again and opens his mouth to say something but the only sound that comes out is a deep, guttural groan. His muscles contract violently and a wave of spasms ricochet through him like a lightning bolt. His body twists again involuntarily and his head jerks back as a low, horrible scream begins somewhere deep in his chest before finally ripping its way out of him.

One hand slams down on Geralt’s leg, hard enough to bruise, and his fingers curl sharply, hooking into the leather covering the Witcher’s leg and the still-healing wound beneath. Geralt hisses sharply when Jaskier’s hand clenches against his leg and effectively rips the stitches loose underneath. He can feel blood spreading hot and fast down the side of his leg but he never loosens his hold on Jaskier.

Strong, violent convulsions continue to wrack the younger man’s fever-stricken body for several more minutes before one particularly strong spasm causes him to pitch to the side again and topple them both onto the floor of the cave. Geralt regains his grip quickly, keeping his arms looped tightly around Jaskier as the younger man continues to shake, shiver, and sob. The convulsions don’t last for longer than a few agonizing minutes but the pain seems to intensify and Jaskier hisses and groans behind clenched teeth with each new wave of pain that sweeps through him.

“I can’t…” he sobs breathlessly, shivering so hard his bones seem to rattle inside. “Oh Gods...it hurts…”

Geralt continues to hold on, offering physical support where he can, but he knows it may not be enough. Extreme pain can break a man faster than anything else, stealing away rational thought and leaving his sanity in shreds. He fears that the pain might become too much, that Jaskier’s weakened body might not be able to handle it, and that it could kill him just as easily as the infection.

He needs something to distract him, something to help him shift his attention away from the excruciating waves of pain that are clawing at him like a vicious animal. The problem is, he has no idea what to say or do that would serve as an effective distraction. He’s never been one for small talk or jokes or anything that would take someone’s mind off their current predicament (usually because it’s a life or death situation and he needs all of his attention focused on whatever is trying to kill them that day of the week). He doesn’t know what to do but he knows what Jaskier would do in a situation like this and it’s as good a diversion as any.

He starts humming.

It pains him to admit that he actually does know the words to many of Jaskier’s songs simply because he’s stuck with him on the road and has no choice but to listen when the bard begins absently singing something from his catalogue. He doesn’t have favorites but he does have preferences to some songs over others and will purposefully huff and grumble a bit more noticeably when the bard ventures into a song choice he doesn’t care for. And yes, he’d rather face a slow, drawn out death than admit that some of Jaskier’s songs and sonnets are actually quite good and well written but he’d be lying if he said that the songs didn’t help pass the long hours on the road.

Granted, he’d never tell Jaskier this because he knows the bard would never let him live it down. However, he feels that now, with Jaskier barely conscious and delirious with pain and fever, it doesn’t really matter if the bard discovers that not only does Geralt actually listen to his songs, he knows all the words.

He doesn’t choose one of the bard’s more popular, familiar songs that he usually plays for the drunken patrons in whatever ramshackle tavern they find themselves in. Nor does he choose one of the more vulgar and bawdy barroom songs that are all but guaranteed to rake in coins thanks to their raunchy and suggestive lines. No, he chooses something newer, more unrehearsed, something that isn’t even finished yet.

It’s a song Jaskier has been working on for weeks now, plucking out a few chords here and there and then interlacing lyrics into it. It’s more of a ballad than anything, a long, winding poem that aches of something deeply human. The song he’s been working on recently is a sweeping romance between a beautiful princess and a nameless pauper, each line full of love and loss and longing, secret glances across courtyards and stolen kisses in the garden. It’s slow and aching and bitterly sad, filled with the promise of what could be but heavy with the reality of a love that would never come to pass.

Again, Geralt would never admit it but he found himself drawn to the story and listened carefully as Jaskier dictated each line and then tested it out to the melody to see if it fit. Jaskier had been obsessing over the song for weeks, trying to get the lyrics perfect and the melody just right so he could perform it the next time they stopped in a decent-sized town. It’s consumed every silent moment they’ve had for weeks now and Geralt hopes that all that obsession will somehow register in the bard’s fever-addled mind and help ground him in the present and keep him from teetering back toward the edge again.

He is not a singer nor has he ever claimed to be so he doesn’t put too much stock into his own voice when he begins mumbling the lyrics against the back of Jaskier’s neck. He tries to match the lilting quality of the lyrics when he sings but it’s not the same; he doesn’t have Jaskier’s finesse for song nor does he have the lute for accompaniment. It doesn’t matter though, not really, all that matters is taking Jaskier’s mind off the pain.

He can’t be sure if his (admittedly terrible) singing is helping or if the pain is slowly, slowly beginning to fade but eventually the tight, rigid muscles in Jaskier’s back begin to loosen and the trembling starts to die down. It doesn’t happen all at once, hell it probably takes close to an hour or better before there’s even the slightest hint of progress, but the bard is still alive and breathing and that’s all Geralt cares about for the moment.

He keeps Jaskier wrapped tightly in his arms, holding onto him as the younger man continues to shudder and sob breathlessly. He listens to each shaky, wheezing breath and winces in sympathy; he knows exactly the kind of pain Jaskier is experiencing because he’s felt it in his own body when he’s taken a potion that's just a bit too strong.

It feels like fire is consuming you from the inside out, charring bones to ash and turning blood into molten iron. Every atom, every cell, every nerve ending is flayed, ripped apart, and crammed back together with force. It’s ironic but it almost seems that the potion has to break you before it can heal you.

He knows how it feels in his own body but he can only imagine how much worse it is for Jaskier. Geralt knows what to expect when he downs one of the vials, he knows how it feels and how it will affect him immediately afterwards; he’s at least prepared for what’s to come. Witcher’s potions are not intended for normal humans so the side effects must be indescribable.

He can’t even offer any kind or reassurance or tell him it’s almost over because he doesn’t know how long the reaction will last. All he can do is hold Jaskier still as he shivers and clenches his teeth and begs for it to be over. He holds him and he hums the sweet, slow melody the bard created for the song in his head and he mumbles the words in the wretched silence of the cave.

Eventually the pain ebbs away, little by little like waves pulling away layers of sand. Jaskier can’t speak; his throat is raw and he’s been clenching his teeth so tightly for so long that the muscles in his jaws are stiff and locked. One hand fumbles weakly against Geralt’s and the Witcher catches it easily, interlocking their fingers and bringing their hands to rest against the bard’s chest. Jaskier’s hands are still shaking badly but he seems to find a little more stability with Geralt hanging on to him.

He takes a small, shaky breath and opens his mouth like he wants to say something but Geralt cuts him off before he can. “Go to sleep,” he tells him softly, the words barely more than a whisper beside the bard’s ear. “I’m right here.”

Jaskier nods weakly and sighs, relaxing a little more in Geralt’s arms and falling asleep a few moments later.

They stay that way for hours, clear into the evening when the sun begins to set and darkness begins to fill the cave. The fire has started to die down, smoldering into bright embers that glow blood red and sunset orange.

Geralt knows he should probably get up and go find more wood for the fire but he’s exhausted and can’t quite muster up the energy to move. He hasn’t slept since they left the town and the stress of trying to keep Jaskier alive is starting to take its toll. He’s strung out and completely worn down and all he wants right now is to sleep for a few hours.

He shifts just slightly so he’s laying in a more comfortable position and takes care not to wake the sleeping bard in his arms. Jaskier’s skin is still a little too hot but his breathing has evened out and his heartbeat has slowed to a more normal rhythm and while he may not be completely out of the woods yet, he’s at least reached the treeline.

Geralt holds him onto him and closes his eyes. He’s asleep within seconds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys! Last chapter up soon! :D


	7. Rest and Recovery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why’re we wet?” Jaskier asks, the fingers of his left hand loosening from where they had formed a death grip on the Witcher’s shirt. 
> 
> “Because you smell like death warmed over.”
> 
> “You’re an ass...” 
> 
> “And you’re a pain in my ass,” Geralt counters, shifting him a little so he’s sitting further in the water. “Now hold still.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for tuning into this silly story of mine! I'm so happy you all liked it! :D
> 
> Y'all are the best!

The fever finally breaks in the middle of the night. Geralt knows this because he wakes up completely drenched in sweat.

Specifically, Jaskier’s sweat.

It’s dark when he wakes up, the embers from the fire glowing dully a few feet in front of him, and for a brief, disconcerting moment he’s worried that the cave has flooded. His clothes are damp and the stone floor under him is slick and wet. Still half-asleep and confused, he thinks it must have started raining again and the wind swept water into the cave while they were asleep. It takes several seconds for him to realize that one, the cave is not flooded and that two, only the ground in the immediate area surrounding them is wet.

Jaskier is sweating like he’s been laying next to a furnace all night but his skin is cooler now than it has been for days. What little clothing he has on is soaked to the skin and he’s shivering mildly in Geralt’s arms, not because of the fever this time but because he’s sweating profusely in the cool darkness of the cave.

Geralt pulls away carefully, gently rolling Jaskier onto the bedroll and groping for the blanket in the darkness. It will do him absolutely no good to finally break that damnable fever only to have Jaskier catch a chill because his body temperature dropped too quickly. He can’t say he’s not relieved, though, when he lays his hand on the bard’s damp, sweaty forehead and feels only the barest remnants of the fever. He’s still a little warmer than usual but it’s nothing compared to the dangerous heat that had been sweltering just beneath the surface for the past several days.

He tucks the blankets around Jaskier carefully and stands, wincing as the change in position pulls at the wound in his leg. The stitches were torn, there’s no denying that, and he can feel the sticky tackiness of drying blood plastering his pants to his leg. It hurts but it’s not unbearable, more of an annoyance than anything else.

He limps to the mouth of the cave and ducks outside to find more wood for the fire. The last lingering legs of the storm have finally moved on and the sky is a velvety black overhead, splattered for miles with bright, pin pricks of stars. The air smells fresh and clean, like the rain washed away invisible layers of dust and pollen when it pushed through.

Geralt gathers a small armload of dry sticks and tree branches and drags them back into the cave, feeding them one at a time into the smoldering embers. Before long the fire is crackling back to life, bright and warm and cheerful. Geralt sits down beside it and turns his attention back to Jaskier.

The younger man appears to be sleeping peacefully now, the deep lines of pain and misery that had etched themselves into his face smoothed and forgotten now. His hair hangs damp and limp across his forehead and Geralt smoothes it back carefully with his fingertips. The wounds in his side are still bloody and raw but they look better than they did before and there’s no sign of lingering infection. Still, Geralt would feel better having a professional, experienced healer take a look at the wounds and keep them from getting infected again. There’s a decent-sized city another day’s ride away from here and he decides that as long as the weather stays clear and dry like this, he’ll take Jaskier and head that way in the morning.

He divides his attention between stoking the fire and tending to Jaskier, gently dabbing the bard’s chilled skin as he continues to sweat out the remainder of the fever. The air in the cave takes on the stale, musty scent of a sickroom, heavy with the smell of sweat and illness.

However unpleasant it may be though, it’s a welcome change to the smell of rot and infection that had pervaded the same area just the day before. Jaskier shivers and sweats beneath the blanket but his fever doesn’t return and for that Geralt is grateful.

Eventually the fatigue begins to catch up with him again and he feels himself begin to nod while he stokes the fire. He’ll need to be at least somewhat coherent if they plan to leave the cave the next day and a few hours of sleep is better than nothing at all.

He abandons the fire and walks over to his own bedroll, tucked clean and unused against one side of the cave. Other than earlier, he hasn’t really slept the whole time they’ve been here. He lays down and shifts for a few seconds to find a comfortable position but then he’s fading almost immediately. He falls asleep to the soft crackle of the fire and the slow, even pull of Jaskier’s breathing across from him.

**OOOOO**

He brings Roach down first.

The mare is already antsy and pacing, clearly tired of the confines of the cave. She’s not used to being stowed away in one place for this long and she’s getting more agitated the longer they stay. She stamps the ground impatiently when Geralt begins repacking the saddle bags the next morning, tossing her head as the first light of dawn begins to illuminate the inside of the cave. It’s abundantly clear that she’s ready to leave and the sooner they’re gone the better.

But then she appears very confused as to why they’re leaving the cave without Jaskier. She huffs and knickers at Geralt as he leads her to the mouth of the cave, planting her hooves and refusing to move if it means leaving the bard behind. He may be annoying, sure, but leaving him to die in the cave seems unnecessarily cruel.

Geralt pats her flank soothingly. “I’m coming back for him,” he tells her simply, tightening a wayward strap on her saddle. “I can only take one of you down the hillside at a time.”

Roach huffs and accepts the answer, allowing him to lead her outside the cave and toward the steep trail back down to the roadway they were traveling a few days before. It’s a slow, cautious journey back down and they zigzag a few times to avoid loose patches of dirt and gravel that could spell disaster in an instant. It was much easier for Geralt to climb up and down this trail by himself when he didn’t have a headstrong horse to deal with.

Once they reach the level ground of the walking path, he leads Roach over to the creek so she can drink from the cool, running stream. He’d been hauling water up for her for the past few days but it was clear that stale water from a pail was no comparison for the real thing. With Roach occupied, he turns and makes his way back up the hill to retrieve Jaskier.

The bard stirs slightly when Geralt kneels down as scoops him up off the ground. He groans and blinks blearily, eyes tracking around the cave for a second as he gets his bearings. “Ger’lt?” he mumbles, his voice croaky and thin from disuse. “Wha’s happenin’?”

“We’re leaving,” the Witcher tells him, shifting him carefully so Jaskier is on his back. He loops the bard’s arms around his neck and links his own arms under his legs so he can carry him. “I’m going to take you to a city so you can get treatment.”

“Mmm,” Jaskier hums against his neck, his cheek resting against the flat plain of Geralt’s shoulder.

“Hold on tight,” Geralt tells him, noting the slackness of the bard’s arms around his neck. After days of battling the fever and infection, he doesn’t exactly have a surplus of strength to work with and Geralt is concerned that he may not be strong enough to hold on while they make their way down.

“‘Kay,” Jaskier mumbles and makes an effort to tighten his hold. It’s not a lot but hopefully it will be enough to get them down the hillside without taking a tumble on the way down.

Geralt tightens his hold on him as well, takes one last look at the cave that had been their home for the past few days, and turns to make his way back down the hill one last time. Again it’s a slow, careful descent but eventually they make their way back to the path and the creekside where Geralt had left Roach.

He stops just at the edge of the creek and carefully slides Jaskier off his back, setting the younger man on the grass gently and retrieving the waterskins from the saddle. He guesses the city is at least a full day’s journey from where they are and while he’s relatively certain the creek runs all the way up to it, he’s not certain enough to not take advantage of a clean water source when it’s right in front of him.

He fills each waterskin as full as he can and hooks them back onto the saddle. The next part of his plan will be a bit trickier and he’s still trying to figure out the best way to do this without shocking Jaskier too much.

Simply put, the bard smells terrible. Between the infection and the fever and the sweat, Jaskier has developed a rather unpleasant musty odor that clings to his skin and hair.

Geralt knows he’s probably much better off himself so he figures he might as well kill two birds with one stone and take advantage of the creek while it’s there.

He lifts Jaskier up off the ground again, this time looping an arm under his knees while the other wraps around his back and shoulders. Jaskier is heavy and limp in his arms, his forehead resting against the side of Geralt’s neck. Mindful of the (finally) healing wounds in his side, he carefully steps into the creek bed and slowly lowers himself to where he’s sitting in the water.

Jaskier jolts awake almost immediately, tensing and struggling for a minute when his brain makes the connection that he’s in some kind of body of water.

“Easy,” Geralt tells him quietly, tightening his hold on the bard just enough to keep him from flailing. “You’re safe, I promise.”

Jaskier relaxes quickly, unwavering in the knowledge that he’s safe so long as Geralt is there. “Why’re we wet?” he asks, the fingers of his left hand loosening from where they had formed a death grip on the Witcher’s shirt.

“Because you smell like death warmed over.”

“You’re an ass...”

“And you’re a pain in my ass,” Geralt counters, shifting him a little so he’s sitting further in the water. “Now hold still.”

Jaskier does as he’s told mostly because he doesn’t have a choice. He’s tucked in the Witcher’s lap like a child and maybe it would have been embarrassing if he’s had the energy for it. He feels weak and drained in a way he’s never experienced before and just the thought of arguing is exhausting. He doesn’t have the energy to protest what was happening, let alone fight it, so if Geralt says he’s taking a bath, then by the gods he’s taking a bath.

Geralt is careful to avoid the cleanly bandaged wounds on his side, not wanting to run the risk of introducing another infection when the other is finally gone, but he takes the time to gently scrub Jaskier the rest of the way down to rid him of the remnants of the fever. His skin still has a tacky, fine layer of salt from all the sweat and it washes away easily with the cool, running water from the creek. Jaskier’s head is still laid against his shoulder so he can’t wash his hair as much as he needs to but he’s able to scoop a few handfuls of water through the bard’s dark hair and loosen the clumps left over by sweat.

By the time Geralt is finished, Jaskier is relatively clean and the stench of fever and illness has been washed from his skin. He takes care of his own washing, deftly cleaning himself up as much as he can while keeping one arm slung around the bard’s waist to keep him upright against his chest. The younger man’s forehead is resting against the side of his neck again, damp hair dripping into his face. He doesn’t know if Jaskier has fallen asleep again or if he just doesn’t have the energy to complain but there’s a noticeable lack of bitching and griping when he slowly stands up and carries him out of the creek and back up to the path where he'd left Roach.

He devests Jaskier of the thin leggings he’s been wearing for the past few days and bundles him into a spare blanket from one of the saddle bags. It will be more trouble than it’s worth to try and re-dress the unconscious bard and at this point Geralt thinks the less clothes the better if it will help him regulate his body temperature.

It takes a little bit of effort between his injured leg and a deadweight bard in his arms but Geralt is eventually able to pull himself up onto Roach’s saddle and get Jaskier securely tucked into the saddle in front of him. He keeps one arm looped around the younger man’s waist to keep him from falling and guides Roach with his free hand.

He leads her away from the creek and back up the path to the main road they’d been traveling a few days before. It’s early enough in the day and he thinks they could probably reach the city by the next morning if they travel without stopping. That plan in mind, he nudges Roach forward and the mare begins to walk.

They pass the remains of the deer a few feet up ahead, the carcass scavenged and mostly picked clean by now. The skeleton is bright and gleaming in the early morning sun but the majority of the skin and muscle has been eaten away by other animals and insects. He thinks maybe one day he’ll tell Jaskier how his life was saved by a dead deer but there’s also a strong chance he’ll just be appalled. Maybe he’ll just keep that knowledge to himself (that is unless Jaskier ever becomes particularly annoying on the road and he needs a quick and effective way to shut him up).

They keep moving and by the time the sun has risen fully, the creek, and the cave, and the dead deer are miles behind them.

**OOOOO**

The first thing Jaskier becomes aware of is that he’s in a bed.

It’s not a large bed; it’s more like a cot, long and narrow and just wide enough to fit him comfortably. There’s a pillow under his head and a light weight blanket laid over him, the thick scent of lanolin drifting up from it and filling his nose.

The second thing he becomes aware of is the chanting.

It’s a low, droning hum that seems to fill the air around him, reverberating in his ears and rattling around in his skull. For a brief, alarming moment his sleep-addled brain comes to the conclusion that he’s been taken by some kind of cult and is about to be sacrificed to appease the old gods and wouldn’t that just be his luck?

The thought causes him to gasp to full consciousness and fling one arm out in a panic but a hand catches his wrist firmly and carefully pushes it back toward him.

“If you rip open your wounds again I’m going to let you bleed to death.” He recognizes the voice and relaxes instantly, turning his head to the side to see Geralt sitting in a chair next to the bed. The Witcher looks cleaner than he’s seen him in weeks and his usually tangled silver hair is tied back in a tight, neat braid.

“Geralt,” Jaskier breathes in relief, smiling at the sight of his friend. His frown fades after a moment, however, and he looks around the room. “Where are we?”

The room is enormous, all white polished walls and large open windows. The ceiling extends high up above them and dozens of crisscrossing pathways arch overhead like a spiderweb composed of stone strands. The room stretches out in front of him for what seems like miles and there are several white-clad figures bustling around from one end of the room to the other. It takes him a moment to realize that the sounds he’d heard before was not chanting so much as it was praying.

“The Healing House of the Northern Mountains,” Geralt tells him, following his gaze around the room. “It’s one of the best infirmaries this side of the Continent.”

Jaskier frowns and shifts a little, suddenly coming to the realization that his back is incredibly stiff from laying in one position for too long. “How long have we been here?”

Geralt looks up at the massive expanse of the ceiling like he’s doing the math. “Going on four days now.”

“Four days?!” the bard parrots back in disbelief.

“I’m told recovery from near-death experiences takes a while. Considering the circumstances I’d say you’re making remarkable time.”

Jaskier frowns at the tightness in his friend’s voice and swallows before he dares to ask the question he knows he probably doesn’t want the answer to. “How bad was it?”

“Do you and I have differing definitions of the phrase ‘near-death experience’?”

“Geralt,” he says again, fixing the Witcher with a look. “How bad?”

The Witcher stares at him for a long moment as if debating on how much he wants to reveal. Finally he just shakes his head. “Bad enough,” he tells him cryptically to which Jaskier determines was apparently pretty damn bad.

“Do you remember anything?” Geralt asks him, watching him from the corner of his eye.

Jaskier thinks for a moment before shaking his head. “Not much,” he admits with a small shrug. “Everything is hazy, like trying to recall a dream.”

The Witcher nods once. “Probably for the best.”

“Hmm," Jaskier muses, watching his friend from the corner of his eye. "While I may not remember much of what happened I know you saved my life. So thank you.”

Geralt huffs and leans back against his chair in a manner that’s intended to come off as relaxed and nonchalant. The tightness of his body language betrays his attempts. “You would have done the same for me.”

Jaskier smiles; it’s the closest thing to a ‘you’re welcome’ he’s going to get so he’ll take it. He lets his gaze drift around the room again, silently taking in the details of the enormous hall around them. It reminds him of a great room in a palace but it’s much too relaxed; the high windows/doors are left wide open so clean, cool air can circulate freely and the people inside can come and go as they please.

The praying he’d heard earlier has a lilting, melodic quality to it, almost like singing but it’s too soft and too far away to make out the words. There’s a warm, heady smell of incense in the air, sacred herbs and flowers burning together through the afternoon prayers. It’s potent, making his thoughts swim lazily, and he’s about to close his eyes to sleep again when he hears someone approaching the bed.

He opens his eyes to see a tiny young woman standing next to his bedside, a shallow wooden basket tucked under one arm. She's dressed all in white and she’s devastatingly pretty. Her hair is covered by a long, white scarf and the only part of her that’s visible is her face. She has grey eyes and freckles on her nose and she speaks in a soft, whispery language Jaskier has never heard before. She says something to Geralt and the Witcher nods and she takes another step toward the bed. She sets the basket on the ground and lifts up the edges of the blanket and Jaskier is suddenly all too aware that he’s completely naked underneath.

He tries to cover himself reflexively but the woman just smiles and bats his hands away so she can examine the wounds on his side. She has small, warm hands and Jaskier tenses in anticipation when she removes the bandages but finds the slashes in his side don’t hurt anymore. He spares a glance down and sees that although the wounds are still deep and red against the rest of his skin, they’re healing quickly and he can’t even feel them unless he really concentrates.

The tiny woman removes the soiled bandages carefully and drops them into the basket on the floor. She speaks to him quietly in her soft, breathy language and for the life of him Jaskier can’t place the language or understand what she’s saying. She applies a cold, slick salve to the wounds and re-covers them with clean bandages, gently lowering the blanket when she’s done and retrieving the basket of soiled bandages from the ground. She says something else to Geralt (again, Jaskier has no idea what) and then walks away, disappearing into a long stretch of hallway that cuts through one wall.

“What did she say?” Jaskier asks, looking back at his companion.

“She says you’re healing well,” Geralt tells him, leaning back in his chair again. “She’s been tending to your wounds since we got here.”

Jaskier swallows and suddenly feels very self-conscious. “Have I been naked this whole time?”

Geralt rolls his eyes. “She’s a postulant, Jaskier. I doubt whatever you have between your legs is enough to distract her from her duties. Besides,” he says with the barest hint of a smirk. “You’ve been naked since the day I brought you here.”

The bard wilts at the statement. “Well that’s embarrassing.”

“Relax,” Geralt tells him, crossing his arms over his chest. “I told you this is a hospital. They likely barely notice the nudity anymore.”

“Easy for you to say when you’re fully clothed,” Jaskier gripes but the flush of embarrassment is fading quickly. His thoughts still feel slippery and hazy like a mirage and it’s hard to focus on something as trivial as his nudity for longer than a few seconds at a time.

“They want you to stay for a few more days,” Geralt tells him, absently tugging the blanket a little higher on one side of the bed. “Just until the wounds heal a bit more.”

“Fine by me,” Jaskier mumbles, feeling the heaviness of sleep begin to pull at his consciousness once more. The thought of moving anything more than a finger right now is exhausting so maybe taking a few extra days to recover isn’t such a terrible idea.

“They also said there are some things you’ll need to avoid for a while to help with the healing process,” Geralt tells him cryptically and Jaskier frowns and turns his head to look at him.

“Like what?”

“Well,” the Witcher begins, watching him from the corner of his eye. “They said you shouldn’t play that insufferable lute or wander around singing ballads and composing sonnets through all hours of the day.”

Jaskier chuckles and shakes his head. “They didn’t say that.”

“They did. They also said you shouldn’t make up ridiculous stories and fall into bed with complete strangers every chance you get. They also said-”

Jaskier laughs then and rolls his eyes, swinging one arm out to swat his friend on the arm. He must be tired and hearing things because he swears he hears Geralt chuckle as well.

“Geralt?”

“Hm.”

“Thank you for everything,” he mumbles quietly, trying his best to get the words out before sleep pulls him under again. “I don’t know everything you did but thank you.”

“Go to sleep, Jaskier.”

He plans to, without a doubt, but there’s one last thing he needs to say first.

“Geralt?”

There's a heavy sigh. "Yes?"

“You have a lovely singing voice.”

“Hm.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys!! :D

**Author's Note:**

> More to come soon guys! :D
> 
> Know who's super rad and could use a shiny new friend on tumblr? You, kiddo.
> 
> Let's be pals: atlantis-is-burning.


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